Help! Video Quality Configuration

[FamilyITGuy]

I am new to the digital video world... Hope I am not doing anything stupid

My first mission as a "serious" videophile is to organize my family's extensive video library (mostly short family videos, shot with cellphones and low-end cameras, but also some GoPro videos, converted VHS, and some ripped movies) and allow my kin -- including not-so-tech-savvy senior citizens -- to access all videos from (i) our home theather with a "dumb" TV/projector, (ii) a smart tv in another room, (iii) two or three chromecasts connected to other "dumb" tvs, (iv) iphones, (v) android cellphones, (vi) one Playstation 3.

All media files are saved on a Network-Attached Storage (NAS), which is networked with all the appliances mentioned above. The video file’s formats are not uniform. Some are .AVI , some .MOV, others .WMV, .MPEG, .MP4, .MKV, .FLV, .VOB, compressed in a myriad of codecs (h.264, mpeg1, mpeg2, sorenson spark, divx, xvid, dv, prores 422 & 444, etc). Needless to say that, today, no hardware I own reads all these media file formats.

Now, I've read the "the best future proof format" discussion, and I made up my mind to convert all old format videos to .MP4, H.264, AAC. I am planning to use Handbrake to do it, then using PLEX to give my people a beautiful, homogeneous, "platform agnostic" experience, as well as server-based transcoding (basically for smaller resolution clients and subtitle embedding).

The $1,000,000 question (which I cannot pay, sorry about that) is: which video quality configuration should I choose to convert my old files to, in order to have them NOT ONLY running on the clients, BUT ALSO keeping a video quality high enough for me to store these files and see them graciously age? I do not fully understand all variables that determine the quality of a video (resolution? fps? bitrate? H.264 profile?), but what I want is to convert them to a quality level that, on one hand, let them be "lean" enough to be streamed (with the lower-end clients getting the video transcoded), and on the other (maybe most importantly), do not loose too much quality, as I am not keeping raw, large, uncompressed video.

To sum up: I do not need raw uncompressed video, but do not want to end up with a bunch of Youtube-quality videos either.

A simple "what you need is eg. 1080/60, 25Mbps, bitrate, NTSC, with this and that setting at Handbrake" would help me A LOT.

If, moreover, you find any issue I might have overlooked and want to tip me, I will be also glad to hear!

Thank you for your help! Mom and Dad will be proud.

[smrpix]

Plex reencodes on playback depending on bandwidth and device -- why not just load up your files as-is?

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201566396-How-are-Direct-Play-Direct-Stream-...ing-different-

[redwudz]

If you want to use Handbrake, I would suggest using VidCoder instead. It's a front end for Handbrake and is much easier to use and more versatile.

I use it mostly for DVD>MKV conversions. (H.264/AC3) I just set a constant framerate, framerate same as source, and constant quality and it's easy.

Since I convert from DVDs, I also set Detelecine and Decomb to default. Probably not needed for your conversions. All other setting can be at default.

I use 19.5 for quality, but you can experiment. That gives me a filesize of about 2GB per converted DVD and with good quality.
I also convert .mov videos from one of my cameras to MKV.

It's also very easy to use for batch conversions,so that saves a lot of time with a bunch of files.

You will probably get a lot of other suggestions.

And welcome to our forums.

[FamilyITGuy]

Plex reencodes on playback depending on bandwidth and device -- why not just load up your files as-is?

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201566396-How-are-Direct-Play-Direct-Stream-...ing-different-

By converting to .MP4, H.284, AAC I intend to avoid hard transcoding on my PLEX Server, as all -- or at least most -- of my hardware seems to be fully compatible with this standard.

If I can play most videos in PLEX as "Direct Play" or "Direct Stream", avoiding most transcoding, I can have a more eficient system from a hardware perspective, meaning it will be less demanding to the server's CPU. I may also want to buy a new media player/htpc, and the less transcoding I have, the cheaper (ie the lower hw requirements) it will be. Right?

[smrpix]

If I can play most videos in PLEX as "Direct Play" or "Direct Stream", avoiding most transcoding, I can have a more eficient system from a hardware perspective, meaning it will be less demanding to the server's CPU. I may also want to buy a new media player/htpc, and the less transcoding I have, the cheaper (ie the lower hw requirements) it will be. Right?

Sure -- but in that case you're just shifting the burden of transcoding onto another system, indeed you're increasing that burden because you're transcoding everything. That's all before you get into the issue of quality loss that every transcode inflicts. And then you have additional storage requirements unless you (unwisely) plan to destroy your originals.

That said, use Redwudz' suggestion as a good starting point if you decide to go that route.

[FamilyITGuy]

If you want to use Handbrake, I would suggest using VidCoder instead. It's a front end for Handbrake and is much easier to use and more versatile.

Silly me! I was already assuming Handbrake was the best tool for newbies. Didnt even consider others. Thanks for the tip.

You will probably get a lot of other suggestions.

I will wait a couple of days for more suggestions then, but I like your approach... Up to curiosity, if we were not talking about the most adequate conversion software, only talking about quality specs, what this configuration would give me (in terms of resolution, fps, bitrate or whatever other measument people usually use)?

And welcome to our forums.

Thanks! Hope one day will be able to help other people too.

[FamilyITGuy]

Sure -- but in that case you're just shifting the burden of transcoding onto another system, indeed you're increasing that burden because you're transcoding everything. That's all before you get into the issue of quality loss that every transcode inflicts.

Thats were my newbism kicks in... If I batch convert these videos using VidCode or HandBrake (container+codec+audio), wouldnt all the transcoding be already done (except, on Plex's case, to embed subtitles or transcode to lower quality rates)?

I guess what I am asking is: if my hw plays .MP4, H.264, AAC natively, and all my library is at .MP4, H.264, AAC (although previously converted from other formats), wouldn't it simply be played as "Direct Play"? Wouldn't transcoding have been already made when I converted the file formats?

And then you have additional storage requirements unless you (unwisely) plan to destroy your originals.

Well, I do not plan to destroy ALL originals. As I said, I have just too many low-quality videos already stored (recorded on old cellphones, old consumer-grade photo cameras, for instance). If their quality is already so low, what would be the problem to loose minimum quality to compress them to current formats? Do you envision circumstances in which I would need an original .AVI, 208x288, MJPEG file instead of its converted .MP4, H.264, AAC counterpart?

Anyway, my "best-quality" videos in storage today are already .MP4, H.264, AAC (GoPro and poorly converted VHS), so...

If there is something else you judge I am also doing unwisely, I would be happy to hear from you! Thanks for your assistance.

[manono]

I wouldn't worry about Plex transcoding, if I were you. For one thing, it does a very good job of it. For another, when I tried to make files that would play without being transcoded, I got nowhere at all. They simply wouldn't play. There are probably some very specific settings needed which I didn't want to waste time figuring out. Won't you love it when your older relatives come whining back to you about being unable to play the files? And do you really think they'll mind, or even notice, a minuscule drop in quality?

[FamilyITGuy]

I wouldn't worry about Plex transcoding, if I were you. For one thing, it does a very good job of it. For another, when I tried to make files that would play without being transcoded, I got nowhere at all. They simply wouldn't play. There are probably some very specific settings needed which I didn't want to waste time figuring out. Won't you love it when your older relatives come whining back to you about being unable to play the files? And do you really think they'll mind, or even notice, a minuscule drop in quality?

I hear you. Problem is that, while trying PLEX, some older videos are not playing already ... By some I would say maybe 25% of it are not played at all in some hw (although I can play them on my PC).

I was hoping that by converting these files I would make them more prone to be read by all (or at least most of) my hw (as it would be able to read the new format natively anyway). Am I wrong in this assumption?

PS: I am also looking for a more "future-proof", "standardized" video library, which is part of my desire to convert everything to one single format ... but I did not want to say it because I dont want my post do end up like this thread. I want to focus on video-quality/specs (although, of course, any advice is welcome).

[manono]

By some I would say maybe 25% of it are not played at all in some hw (although I can play them on my PC).

I've not found anything Plex couldn't play, but then everything I've tried has been pretty mainstream. No Sorenson videos here. The only problems I had were before I learned about their naming conventions. You sure everything is named properly?

Video/quality specs? I usually make MP4s at a lowish CRF 18. You could make MKVs just as easily, but YouTube wants MP4 so that's what I make both for them and for myself. Nothing too difficult about that. Unless some of your sources are crappy DVDs that need some specialized filtering first. And I play them from my PC through a Roku box to a couple of TVs. A Roku is very easy to set up and use and we have a seven year old here operating the Plex channel on Roku and on a PS3 to watch her movies on the televisions. No other hardware devices are in use.

Oh, and MakeMKV is very good at making MKVs from DVDs and Blu-Rays for playing through Plex.

Others can help with Handbrake settings as I've never used it.

[smrpix]

There are no batch "one size fits all" settings to use if you're trying to maintain quality and minimize space.

General rules of thumb if you must convert: keep your frame rate and dimensions the same as the original unless you've got a damned good reason for changing them. Use a slightly higher bitrate than the original -- depending on the the source codec -- to minimize quality loss.

If you would like to post a short video that doesn't play on the plex, many here would be happy to give specific suggestions.

[_Al_]

well CRF 18 or similar is that "helping hand" about bitrate, because with such a vast database of videos , different formats, different quality, it is difficult to recommend what bitrate would be needed , it is going to be all extrems like between some fuzzy flv and prores. Constant Quality encoding perhaps sets bitrate much higher than original for that flv but much, much lower for that prores.

Personally, I'd encode only dv, or DVavi, flv, prores 422 & 444, put mov into mkv container, but I am not Apple user. If it is some photo camera, it would need to be treated by what there is inside of that mov actually. Dv or DVavi or prores would be kept in archives.
VOB's - if those DVD's are yours just make some mpg out of it, or mkv, no re-encoding. If those are movies, who cares , encode or not.

dv, if application cannot read dv for some reason, for encoding, you can just put it into Microsoft DV avi:
"ffmpeg.exe" -i "video.dv" -vcodec copy -vtag dvsd -acodec copy -aspect 4:3 "video.avi"