NAS is on the way!!! C'mon, share what the heck you are doing!!

mrbiron wrote: »

Plex is on the kindle, one, and fire tv now. CHECK
Now I need to get my read on about a processor. It's the starting point of this whole build. I would like to go with the latest and greatest socket build but know that might cost more dinero.

Still an AMD fanboy at heart...but will convert for the right price/performance ratio.

For Plex, you normally want horsepower over graphics... Intel dollar for dollar has better pure horsepower than AMD (trust me I'm a AMD boy myself). If you were talking graphics at all, then I'd harken to AMD, but when your using it to send the video to another device, the horsepower of the chip matters more, and thats where Intel is just one of the best...

The 1150 socket is a bit older, but it wont be going away just yet.... I'd get your read on with Ryan's build and then mine... we both talk a bit about processor.. He fails to mention he moved from the Pentium chip to the i5 I suggested... and I'm now using his Pentium with no issues streaming to just one device at a time... haven't done 2 at the same time yet....

But I'm also watching the prices on that same i5 as a eventual upgrade for myself so I can know I will be able to add additional clients and stream from mutliple devices in the future without fear.

Also read this thread on the actual what software I use, how to do it, etc...

Note Handbrake is a program I'm aware of but haven't ever used... maybe I should look into it again to save myself some space, but I'm rocking 8 TB right now and with kid movies on one drive and non-kid on the other I've still got about 2 TB free on each drive right now...

billbillw wrote: »

As I said, always a tradeoff. I take about 1-hr to encode my movies. That takes them from 30GB to usually less than 10GB. I don't care how cheap storage is, I'll take a 3-times the storage any day for an hour per movie.

I haven't had a botched encode job since I started using the combination of MakeMKV and Handbrake. Not a single noticeable video artifact in more than 3 years and well over 100 movies. I did see artifacts way back when I used Nero Re-code.

Ditto.
When I Handbrake I usually go about 50% of the original file size.
I've been using MakeMKV and Handbrake for about 3-4 years now and never had any issues with video playback. Every movie I have is MKV and I stream from a QNAP NAS to a Dune HD Base 3D.

Post up your guys settings for handbrake then and maybe I will give it a shot......

All I care about is it keeps it at 1080p and keeps either 5.1 or DTS/TrueHD audio without downsampling....

EndersShadow wrote: »

Post up your guys settings for handbrake then and maybe I will give it a shot......

All I care about is it keeps it at 1080p and keeps either 5.1 or DTS/TrueHD audio without downsampling....

Here is the thing with Handbrake. It is easy with DTS/AC3/DTSHD. But it is not with TrueHD (or ATMOS).

For now, lets just stick with a basic DTSHD 1080p movie, ripped with MakeMKV. Keep only English DTS-HD soundtrack and English subtitles when ripping.

Here is what I do. Open Handbrake. Select source file. I don't change much from default settings. On aspect ratio, it defaults to loose, I select Strict. On audio settings, I chose DTSHD Passthru on the output. In subtitles, I add each of the english subtitles
(sometimes there are multiple), just add English 1, 2, etc.

I tend to save the file as MKV (it defaults to MP4), but that's because I use Kodi exclusively. MP4 is compatible with more devices.

That's it. Make sure in the chapters tab is it checked to add chapter marks.

In the video settings, there is a slider for quality. I think it defaults to 20. I don't change that. I'm happy with default quality and H.264. I watch mostly on a 100" projection screen and I don't find the image to be too soft or pixelate.

Now, if you have a TrueHD/ATMOS soundtrack, you have to encode without the audiofile, then use MKVtoolnix to remux the smaller encode with the audio file from the original rip. Sounds tough, but it is really easy and only take 3-5 minutes extra for that step.

So, i suppose i should try MakeMKV and Handbrake tonight for a trial run because a lot of this lingo is foreign at this point.

I hope my tired, 6 year old laptop is up the task!
I will most likely be on here rambling off questions at lightning speed when it takes place.

mrbiron wrote: »

I hope my tired, 6 year old laptop is up the task!
I will most likely be on here rambling off questions at lightning speed when it takes place.

Yeah, I wouldn't plan on doing that too much. With Handbrake, all cpu cores/threads hit 100% CPU usage and stay that way until the job its finished. You'll have a little oven going inside that laptop. 6 years old? What cpu is that?

For encoding with handbrake, you really need a solid performing desktop system with good cooling. Intel Core i5/i7 or hex/octacore AMD would be the minimum I would recommend.

billbillw wrote: »

Yeah, I wouldn't plan on doing that too much. With Handbrake, all cpu cores/threads hit 100% CPU usage and stay that way until the job its finished. You'll have a little oven going inside that laptop. 6 years old? What cpu is that?

For encoding with handbrake, you really need a solid performing desktop system with good cooling. Intel Core i5/i7 or hex/octacore AMD would be the minimum I would recommend.

My aged laptop has an old i3 which just so happens to be the CPU i was thinking of using for this build except newest gen (6th) for power consumption and really only being a media/NAS.

What is your suggestion with a CPU starting point?

I should really, probably start a new thread with this as i have already mucked the buck out of this one.

westmassguy wrote: »

Sometimes there's no substitute for brute force.

That was my pickup line in college.....100% of the time, it had 0 to no effect.

mrbiron wrote: »

billbillw wrote: »

Yeah, I wouldn't plan on doing that too much. With Handbrake, all cpu cores/threads hit 100% CPU usage and stay that way until the job its finished. You'll have a little oven going inside that laptop. 6 years old? What cpu is that?

For encoding with handbrake, you really need a solid performing desktop system with good cooling. Intel Core i5/i7 or hex/octacore AMD would be the minimum I would recommend.

My aged laptop has an old i3 which just so happens to be the CPU i was thinking of using for this build except newest gen (6th) for power consumption and really only being a media/NAS.

What is your suggestion with a CPU starting point?

I should really, probably start a new thread with this as i have already mucked the buck out of this one.

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that the HTPC (or in your case NAS media server) and the encoding system should not be the same. Server/HTPC should be low power, quiet, etc. Encoding system is full blown, high power, who cares about the fan noise, get her done as quick as possible!!

Dunno, maybe that's just me. I love to build PCs and at one point had as many as 5 custom built PCs and 3 laptops! (that included 3 dedicated HTPCs). Yeah, I'm crazy at times. I currently only have two PCs and two laptops right now (plus two Chromebox-Kodi units).

Honestly, if you weren't worried about how long it took, the i3 would probably be OK for encoding as long as it had hyper-threading (to simulate quad core). I just wouldn't plan on streaming any movies while it was busy encoding.

billbillw wrote: »

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that the HTPC (or in your case NAS media server) and the encoding system should not be the same. Server/HTPC should be low power, quiet, etc. Encoding system is full blown, high power, who cares about the fan noise, get her done as quick as possible!!

Dunno, maybe that's just me. I love to build PCs and at one point had as many as 5 custom built PCs and 3 laptops! (that included 3 dedicated HTPCs). Yeah, I'm crazy at times. I currently only have two PCs and two laptops right now (plus two Chromebox-Kodi units).

Honestly, if you weren't worried about how long it took, the i3 would probably be OK for encoding as long as it had hyper-threading (to simulate quad core). I just wouldn't plan on streaming any movies while it was busy encoding.

The issue is money........I'm trying to be cost effective.

I'm going to check the specs on my wife's iMac when i get home. If i can use that for the encoding, then i can save on the server side.

Stay Tuned.

I've been using handbrake on an old laptop that's older than the one you have. Sure it takes about a little over an hour to do an encode, but I'm fine with that right now. I just queue up 6-7 a night and let them go. I've been converting all my .iso movie files to .mp4 to save space on my NAS. I was almost out of space, but since running handbrake have shrunk movies down to 1.8GB-2.5GB rather than 6-7GB per movie.

I think you'll get an idea of running handbrake even on just your existing laptop. I use my laptop (8+ years old) to rip and encode and the Synology to serve up the media. It's not state of the art, but it works just fine. It's an older Intel Duo with 4GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD if that matters. Someday I'll upgrade my desktop machine, but in the meantime this works just fine for what it is.

You tried Digiber converter? That always used to be a reliable converter whenever I tried it. Just converts videos from one format to another, along with some interesting configuration options. http://www.digiber.com