Best file format to save movies

[Shadeslayers09]

I currently us MakeMKV to rip blue-ray dvd's, which put them in .mkv format. Was wondering if there is a better format to use other than .MKV? right now each movie is about 30gigs of storage and was wondering if there is another file format that will shrink the file size but keep the quality of the movies the same.

[TheDreadPirate]

Containers have no bearing on file size. You need to use something like hand break to either use a more efficient codec or lower the bit rate of the current codec.

[Shadeslayers09]

What would you recommend? I'm a newby just starting out creating my media server. only have 32 movies so far but have surpassed 1TB of storage (not sure if that's normal or not)

[Venson]

Well that wholly depends on your needs. I usually keep a mix of H264 and H265(HEVC). That is mainly because i dont want to spend the effort of pre-transcoding anything and (had) the space that i have not cared about it.

A few limitations: HVEC is required for anything "big". Speaking 4K HDR. But HVEC is usually also a good chunk more space efficent then H264. On the other hand H264 can be usually played by anything*

* there are some other factors like encoder level and profile.

In the end, it sounds like you have quite a few high resolution videos so you could just reencode them with a lower bitrate (what bitrate exactly, do you have to decide to get the best visual fidelity vs space) or you are actually getting into the "need-to-know" rabbithole that is a media server and why some people build 100TB nas servers.

[trekkie690]

I too use MakeMKV, and then I use Handbrake to transcode (covert) to compress and reduce the file size. For instance a 4K HDR UHD movie will usually be between 30-60GB in size, pending the length. After ripping it with MakeMKV to get the inital file i then use handbrake to transcode it to h.265 or h.265-10 inside a MP4 container (.m4v). Pending how lazy i am i'll use Hardware or Software encoding. That will usually reduce it to 5-15% of the original size. so 3-15GB. If you want to save space and store as much as you can then you need to trasncode (compress) the video files. Lots of way to do this, but up to you the level of quality you want to receive.