Anything better than Handbrake for Shrinking MKV's of Bluray

JohnWB

Established Member
Joined
Jan 27, 2006
Messages
620
Reaction score
49
Points
229
Location
Middlesbrough
I have been ripping Bluray Movies using MakeMKV which works very well and the size of a movie is ok.

I now have a couple of Bluray TV series which MakeMKV rips as about 8g each episode which is a bit large for keeping for a while.

Does anyone have any recommendations for free software to use to get the size down a bit without loosing to much quality.

I have heard of Handbrake but was wondering if there was anything better.
 
I use a combination of Handbrake and Ripbot 264. Personally, I prefer ripbot as the aspect ratio selection is more accurate and the options are generally easier to set. It's all personal preference though and it depends what you get used to.
I could sware the image quality is SLIGHTLY better with ripbot too.
 
MakeMKV doesn't convert the video, it's the same as on the disc all it does is pull the video off the disc and dump it in an mkv container.

Most encoders out there use x264 pretty much the best image quality H.264 encoder out there.

Handbrake is one of the most straightforward to get going, plus relatively easy to use but only does limited releases, like 1-2 in a year if that. It supports most media types and generally gives decent video output, it also handles DVD's the best and does cropping a lot easier than most other encoders though cropping black borders isn't necessary with x264.

The downside to Handbrake is you can run into media types occasionally it cant handle, it has poor subtitle management and it's a tad slower than other encoders at similar settings at least in my experience.

BDtoAVCHD is meant for converting Blu-ray's only, it is easy to install and quick to queue up jobs, fast and stable, currently my favourite pick for BD's. Despite the name you can output to mkv with it and it also does 3D Blu-ray's too however you must feed it the raw BD folder structure to get 3D prompts, feeding MKV only works for 2D video.

Ripbot264 supports more media types that Handbrake cannot handle, it is also more cutting edge using the latest versions of x264, can distribute encoding over the network to multiple PC's & is constantly updated. Downside to Ripbot264 is it does take a bit of work to set up and install and time to queue up jobs.

TX264 is a little interesting it's slightly more technical than Ripbo264 & doesn't have all the same features but is a bit easier to get up and running, TX264 exposes various presets of x264 that can tune for film, animation and squeeze even more quality out of an encode or sacrifice it for speed instead. It also uses the latest versions of x264.

Hybrid, a super technical x264 encoder, exposes tons of options you can tweak.

IVI Pro, a commercial Mac based front end to Handbrake, Handbrake is already available for Mac's & free but this application has one thing going for it in that it auto integrates iTunes metadata into the mp4 videos it outputs so you see the coverart/movie info in iTunes and on your iOS device.

DVDFab Ripper, this is a decrypt-er and encoder rolled into one, as a basic encoder is gives you very few options. It does support hardware encoders though like Intels quick sync which can cut down conversion time by a significant amount, quality wise not as good as x264 but not as bad as GPU encoders.

I'm using BDtoAVCHD to compress my Blu-ray's, works out well enough for me. Use High profile, medium, flim, constant rate factor at 18 and it cuts most BD's in half while looking almost identical to the original.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that, i will try Ripbot then
 
Well, this is fascinating. Recently acquired Handbrake to very slightly reduce the bitrate of ripped Blu-rays so they stream via my home plugs (which can't quite handle a full-fat Blu-ray MKV such as Avatar). So far my two attempts have resulted in massively smaller files (less than 2Gb for the first one, down from 28Gb) - clearly useless. I'm sure HB can do it once I've figured it out, but would a bit of extra effort with Ripbot be worthwhile? Obviously I want to preserve as much quality as possible and just trim the bitrate sufficiently to get smooth streaming. Any suggestion for getting this right with either package would be appreciated.
 
DVD Shrink works on DVDs (hence the name) not Blurays and Super sucks compared to XMedia Recode.
 
Well, this is fascinating. Recently acquired Handbrake to very slightly reduce the bitrate of ripped Blu-rays so they stream via my home plugs (which can't quite handle a full-fat Blu-ray MKV such as Avatar). So far my two attempts have resulted in massively smaller files (less than 2Gb for the first one, down from 28Gb) - clearly useless. I'm sure HB can do it once I've figured it out, but would a bit of extra effort with Ripbot be worthwhile? Obviously I want to preserve as much quality as possible and just trim the bitrate sufficiently to get smooth streaming. Any suggestion for getting this right with either package would be appreciated.


You probably need to research settings with regards to quality to get the results you want. handbrake and indeed ripbot will both start with fixed settings designed to give good quality and quite small filesizes relative to the large size you begin with. I think handbrake and ripbot both default to a crf value of 20 when they start. Try putting the crf value to 18 and that will give you excellent almost subjective identical to the source file but with a smaller size.

Don't be surprised at how much smaller the filesize can become though. a 30GB BD MKV can become 6-8 GB and thats typical of the results to expect, and even smaller if you were to reduce the resolution to 720p.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that. I've managed to do some experimenting and it IS surprising. I've used Ripbot to do a couple of files at the 'best' quality setting (16) and still get files sizes vastly smaller than the original MKV - in the ballpark quoted. On the basis that there's no such thing as a free lunch, what am I losing? I'd be happy to reduce the bitrate just sufficiently to get a stream uninterrupted through my home plugs, but the 'best' option seems to strip out two thirds to three quarters of the bits. The new files do stream perfectly well as you'd expect which is great, but before I launch into a massive re-encode of my entire blu-ray collection, I need to understand how the heck this is happening!
 
Ripbot isn't just about one setting it takes a balance. There is also Megui you can use which does the same job but might be easier.

When compressing a file on most you can choose a constanat file output size which will give you a variable bitrate depending on the scene being displayed, the nitrates can differ massively. Using a constant bitrate will give you a small file size as normally the bitrates are in Mb/s.

Also you have to be careful as a compression will generally alter the image of the file meaning you will have to touch it up to get it back looking like the original. This is done using scripting in avisynth. It is quite a art keeping the original image quality and reducing the size of a file.

So without reading through everything what is causing the issue on the homeplugs? Too high a bit rate passing?
 
So without reading through everything what is causing the issue on the homeplugs? Too high a bit rate passing?

Yes. I bought TP-Link jobs, rated up to 500Mbps. Using their power line utility I don't seem to manage more than 84Mbps, but the data transfer light displays red almost all the time, indicating I'm getting below 50. What this means is that some, but not all, my blu-ray rips will stream. Lower bit rate files will work, but Avatar (worst case scenario) lasts approximately 3 seconds before buffering. Like most folk, I don't have the freedom to simply site the plugs wherever will get the best through-put. They are where they are and work pretty well, but sadly don't quite manage full-fat blu-ray rips. In an ideal world I'd just work through the collection and slightly reduce the files that won't stream. I had no idea there was a kind of post-production process after conversion to help restore lost quality, but it I'd be interested to know more about it.
 
Remember guys from my experience its usually the audio options which reduce the file sizes the most

a brand new BR release with a HD audio soundtrack ripped to a 1080p stereo soundtrack can easily lose 80-90% of its file size (Ive seen several going from 20GB+ to between 2-3GB just for this reason). Shouldnt need to alter visual quality very much if at all.

Ive kept majority of my 500 BR rips at original quality as Im using a genuine wired network (rather than TP-Link / homeplugs which dont work in my building), but now Ive got a tablet Im looking at ways to transcode these on the fly suitable for wireless transmission that you can try before you buy (unlike plex for android which is chargable from the start)
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is Home Theater DEAD in 2024?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom