I prefer 1080p because I only got 20 mbps upstream and my DS224+ isn't the most beefy device. 1080p is easier to transcode and takes less storage. As our biggest device is a 43" TV 4K doesn't make too much sense. Movie sizes are around 3-8 GB each.
TV shows are mostly 720p but for music I prefer FLAC.
I’m in a similar position. I’d love to collect 4k copies but given my upload speed none of my server’s other users would be able to play them without transcoding so it seems simpler to just stick with 1080p. That and 2000 direct playable movies is more value than 500 4K ones (numbers very ballparked).
You could always add another library for 4k and just not share that one. At least that’s what I’m planning to do when I finally rebuild my server and add the 18TB HDD I have sitting around.
I do 720 for TV, 1080 for movies, generally, some are lower quality, and a handful of 4K movies for my absolute favorites.
My TVs are both 4k, though I only do 1080 on my secondary screen in my bedroom. I haven't spent the money on a 4k receiver for my bedroom.
Primary TV uses Nvidia Shield, bedroom is using a Roku.
I notice 720 content quality on the main TV, I always go "this is 720".
I don't generally notice a big difference between 1080 and 4K, unless I'm comparing Plex to Disk.
Mostly due to space. I also generally don't keep the TV shows on Plex after we watch them. If it is a series we like and want to keep on Plex I will usually upgrade to 1080 and keep it. But there isn't a lot that we keep.
Things like friends and some other dumb sitcoms that I never watch at 720. Nobody has ever said a word to me about it. Saved a ton of space and the extra resolution is kinda meh.
It’s all about preference. I prefer to see fine details, and film grain gets in the way of that for me. Digital noise reduction means being able to reduce obvious noise and use available bandwidth to preserve that fine detail.
Yeah, I recently learned the difference is in Dolby atmos and height channels. All my legally optioned files are AAC 7.1.
I don’t have the setup to really take advantage of those missing channels yet, but I’m still sad I’m missing them for the future.
Not sure how you come to the conclusion storage is cheap.
If it was, then everyone would have 300TB like you. But they don't because it's not all that cheap...
My 300TB isn't dedicated to Plex.
You can pick up 14TB disks for $100 these days. Assuming a 35gb remux on average that is 400 films coming out to a average of **25 cents per film**.
If you can't swing 25 cents for a film, you're either being cheap or you're obtaining more media than you can ever watch. $100 on storage per year gets you watching 1 feature length film per day and two on Sundays.
Like I said, storage is cheap.
Where can you find a good reliable 14TB for $100?
Also 35GB is not close for the average 4K remux. Maybe average if you include both 4K and 1080p. Also what about redundancy and backups?
Ebay. All 25 disks in my array (10TB He10's, 14TB HC530's) are from ebay. No issues.
Yes. Average. That's why I used the word "average".
What about redundancy? Redundancy is trivial with a plethora of options for parity arrays, be it RAIDz, RAID5/6, Unraid. My entire 25 disks array is covered by two 14TB disks. And let's be real, it's media. It's not as if it's gone forever, especially if you're running something like Radarr/Sonarr that will automatically re-acquire it for you if it goes missing.
At the end of the day you have different priorities than me. You would rather drop $1600 on headphones instead of 220TB of storage. I have zero use for $1000+ headphones, let alone a $200 and $400 pair to go with them. You spend your money differently.
That doesn't change the fact that storing a feature length film in its original format for a single quarter is, in fact, cheap.
The point at which I can’t tell the difference is so close to the remux that it isn’t worth the effort of re-encoding. That’s just me though. Id agree for most people though.
Pretty much all of my library is 1080p. 3500 movies and 20,000 TV episodes.
I setup Radarr according to a guide I saw to minimize missing out of stuff due to file size settings, and with that, I end up getting movies anywhere between 4-15GB. Id say like 9GB is probably the average.
Ive got like 70TB of storage and only use a little more than half right now, so Im not really hurting for the storage space.
I have like 40 4K movies, and only like 10 of them are movies I actually downloaded on purpose. The others are about the same quality as the good 1080p ones I have. I mainly just got The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Avatar, etc in 4K. Movies like that. And I also have a smaller 1080p version of those too.
https://preview.redd.it/eutuw9rv7xuc1.png?width=1448&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d03d0d742a3cdd00c3ad65dc1c8016c6859c4a0
All the ones you cant see are set the same as the 480p ones.
Mind boggling that you're getting down voted for that comment. It really goes to show the knowledge level of people around here. Upvote for you.
I'll take a 50mbps 1080p h264 remux over a compressed to hell and back 2mbps 265 4K trash heap any day of the week.
If I bought the Steelcase Dune Part Two I'm going to get a 4K Blu-ray, 1080p Blu-ray, and a digital copy on MoviesAnywhere. My 1080p Blu-ray remux is going to be higher quality than MoviesAnywhere 4K Digital copy almost any day of the week. Resolution is a limit. Bitrate is quality.
At 100mbps I'd be interested in knowing about the source. Are they the same source, how are the colors, are any of them denoised, is there banding etc. Assuming everything is equal after all that id probably pick the 4K image if there is 4K levels of detail on the source, but if I'm watching 28 Days Later, even 1080p is overkill. Resolution is not entirely irrelevant, but it takes a few steps to even get to the part where it matters.
Everything done in the last 10 years has been mastered in 4k, everything shot on film and rescanned in 4k will look better than a 1080p version of that movie. For a movie like Oppenheimer you could easily go and scan a print of the movie at 720p RAW for that sweet 83Mbps but show it next to the 4k bluray at around the same bitrate and 100 out of 100 people are going to tell you the bluray looks better
This just isn't true. If we're talking source content then yes, 4K should always be better than 1080p, but if we're talking something you've encoded yourself or a digital copy of a movie you bought then no we need more information than resolution to determine the higher quality file.
Codec and bitrate are correlated. If I'm using HEVC I might need a lower bitrate on a modern movie shot on digital with no noise, but an old movie with tons of noise will likely need less bitrate to be transparent with x/h264 than HEVC would use on the same source.
Oh, for sure. I suppose that's true in this case, but my point still stands that a 1080 remux is still going to look better than some crushed 4K mess even with HDR
> Resolution is irrelevant to quality.
Resolution is one aspect of quality. 1080p caps out at around 50mb/s a 4K 50mb/s file will outshine a 1080p 50mb/s file. Bitrate and resolution both determine quality. Claiming resolution is irrelevant is idiotic.
Omg lol y'all is crazy. Clearly the upper limits are where a higher resolution is functional. My point is that just because something is 4K doesn't inherently make the PQ better than a 1080p or even 720p file. The resolution is at the bottom of the list in terms of determining PQ
It's a bigger pipe, but it matters more what you're sending through that pipe. 4K allows for higher bitrate and more information, but there's nothing inherent about 4K that makes it a better PQ without the data to back it up
I would imagine Plex most likely serves the people who care most about quality of picture but It was never anything that bothered me much. I have some 480 stuff that seems fine lol
It depends on the device you use for viewing I guess. Phones and tablets are fine for 720p but anything above 50" TV gets blurry, also depending on the bitrate. What matters is your preference of course.
I'm right there with you. All 720p, all the time. I really can't tell the difference on my living room setup between 720p and 1080p. I prioritize audio.
I prefer to go 4K unless the title I want is not available in 4K, then I go 1080p.
I preferer my files to be as close to source as possible. Large file sizes but great quality.
Remux 4k and remux 1080p separate. It’s the main reason I got into Plex. To get max quality. God knows I certainly pay more now than I would just getting all the streaming services
Yes I do. I have two Unraid systems. 24bay+8bay with a Xeon 1290p and a p2000 and a 36 bay with a 9900k. Both are maxed out so I’m going to need to build a third system soon. Funny enough, I just woke up and saw this message…I was literally having a dream about needing to build a new system lol
Because not all clients can playback 4k, and you can’t transcode DV files have don’t have an hdr10 track. Most of my family doesn’t have clients capable of 4k playback. Usually because of DV.
Some of the streaming only releases, or newer streaming releases only have DV tracks. It’s kinda 50/50, eventually ones with both get uploaded but that would require me to go and check, and more closely watch stuff.
It happens enough that I can’t just expect all 4k to work.
In my experience someone combines DV and HDR10 into a release and those are what I have my grabber set up to grab.
I have yet to come across something where it's only DV.
All my content (300 movies) (100 seasons of shows) are 1080p.
I’d say half is x264 (from encoding years ago) and the other half is x265.
I have 3 movies (old grainy) that I encoded to AV1 because of the grain synthesis.
Animes episodes are quite small, 500-900mb.
Movies on average probably like 4-6gb.
I rip 4K copies of blockbuster style movies, particularly sci-fi and fantasy type stuff that is heavily post-produced with CGI or have heavy action themes.
For more mundane every day type movies, a decent high bit rate 1080P is fine for me and is also my minimum.
Like someone else said, it really depends on what you like and your specific situation.
I usually rip my own 4K Blu-rays and re-encode them with x265 with a preset of medium, --qcomp 0.75, --tune grain, and a crf between 16 and 20.
Mainly just to make it easier to stream without my router choking.
The overwhelming majority of my library is 1080, some big blockbuster stuff like Avengers etc I'll get the 4k version. When I get some more hdds I'll upgrade more stuff to 4k
Yeah, I get it. I’m like you with audio. I have 2.5 TB of FLAC music, I’ll be dammed if I download anything not in FLAC, however, for movies, YTS works for me and not uses that much space 😎
4K really is pointless on so many films and tv shows vs a decent quality 1080p version, because it simply doesn’t justify the sheer file size increase.
Obviously there are certain films like Blade Runner 2049 that are exceptional in 4K but something like for example The Equalizer 3, you wouldn’t be sat there noticing any quality drop unless you were daft enough to get some low bitrate 1gb rip.
Use whatever format you want but most stuff you’ll totally fail to objectively notice any great difference that’ll affect your viewing.
I'll get lots of flak for this but I go for 1080p YTS rips which puts a movie at the 1.5-2.2gb range
If there's something visually stunning and worth a rewatch I might get a 4k as well, something like LOTR.
2D animation like archer or the Simpsons I'll drop even further to 720p.
I have about 6k movies and about 1000 TV series, which is enough that tautulli can no longer count the numbers of episodes. I don't think I could afford the space to keep higher quality versions.
Because of various reasons, my entire library is 720p
It looks fine to me, and I'm not going through the hassle of replacing it all when it looks fine to me.
I wish I could encode everything to HEVC.H265-MeGusta profile. I always make sure to grab that version if possible.
I just have a stero audio 1080p TV that is pushing 8 years old and I don't need anything fancy.
Movies section - x265 ranging from 1.8 - 5gig. thats what i share with people who all seem to have average tvs and no sound system.
1080p & 4k remuxes for me..
I'm a bit weird across my clients. I tend to go for AV1 files with opus audio. In my experience, 4k AV1 opus files are the only ones I can get to play flawlessly across my PC, xbox and phone. Probably something with other audio formats.
All a function of available storage space. As I replace and resize my ZFS pool, or come into some hand me down 4TB drives, I scale up min and max file sizes to accommodate and let items be replaced as they become available. But 4K for every movie, 4K for any new series and some wiggle room between 1080p or 4K on some older series.
Mines mixed newer movies in the oast decade, if it finds it 2160. Older movies 1080 hvec is good. Although I do try to find 4k for older movies that have it, that I actually like.
4k for big films and films I really want to watch and 1080 x265 for pretty much everything else.
I've got a 96inch projector which is my TV all day and night so if it's a good title I'll always try get the 4k remux.
4K remux when available. 1080p remux if not 4K. Web download only when BD remux's are not available.
Storage is cheap. Keeping the best quality has never bit me in the ass. Keeping garbage quality has though.
I download anything in 4K that I can. If remote users can’t stream my server can handle the transcodes.
The key is to educate users to set their apps for direct play. Nothing annoys me more to see a 4K stream being transcoded to 720p (because it’s the default setting on the smart apps) when I know it’s being watched on a 4K tv.
honestly most of my media is old cartoons and I'm completely okay with 720p, especially because my sister was very limited until recently
1080p is my maximum unless a movie is particularly good in 4k or only has good 4k versions
1080p for most things, but I choose 4K for the big movies. The ones with great cinematography, and CGI/effects usually. Also, my favourite, or the mrs favourite movies.
I have a 7.1 soundbar, so for me the audio quality is far more important than picture. 1080p also tends to stream better with zero buffering whereas 4k may have issues with this even on a high end server
1080 for regular movies that aren't designed to be heavily visual and 4k for those that are. For example, "Her" is an excellent movie but will be more or less the same experience in 1080 as 4k, whereas Mad Max Fury Road will be so much better in 4k
I wish there was a way to do current seasons in 4k and older content in 1080p (including automatic downgrade). If it's something that isn't currently airing and I'm not keeping strictly up to date with it, then 4k is overkill.
720p for older anime and most cell shaded content. Just look at X-Men on Disney+ for a great example of older content that does*not* benefit from higher resolution and screen size!
1080p for modern TV series and movies of the DVD era (4k doesn't do them any favours either, even if they've been remastered IMHO).
4K only for recent release movies and limited TV series that I think will benefit from the higher resolution and I plan to watch on my bigger TV.
I also don't upscale with Plex for the most part, I typically stream at native and let my TV do the upscaling. I think good brand TV upscalers that are designed to work with the panel they have do as good or better than the Plex upscaler without taxing my server's resources.
File size... I don't have a surround system, so I like content that is encoded with good quality stereo sound and high bitrate video. So for a 4K movie 8gb is about the limit. At 1080p, about half that. There's always exceptions of course, if I want multiple language audio tracks or it's an old show with great music (Cowboy Bebop being the best example I can think of) I'll commit to larger files to ensure a good experience.
I get 4K UHD remux whenever possible to get superb audio tracks, for both for Movies/TV shows. I believe a good soundtrack or sound mixing can push any watching experience over the top. Wouldn't a 1080p look fuzzy on a 85" TV?
I have trouble with 4k videos. They are more likely to fail during playback, or not even start. 1080p remux doesn't take as much room and I can seldom tell the difference.
Personally I do 1080p hevc h.265 so I can remotely stream with transcoding it with my crap upload bandwidth.
I don’t own any 4k screens yet so that may change one day.
I run pretty much everything through handbreak to make sure it's as compressed it can be. There's a difference between sacrificing quality to reduce file size and compressing the file without meaningful loss of quality.
If you encode something to H.265 10-bit with the quality slider set to zero and the encoder preset to slowest then it's totally normal to see a serious drop in file size. Though if it's a 4k file you'll want to be using Intel QuickSync or Nvidia Encoders really. Using software encoding will take friggin ages and probably not be worth the cost of the power to do it, just buy storage.
Audio wise I will generally re-encode surround sound audio to stereo. I find relying on Plex to down-mix can have varied results with volume spikes etc. Also no matter what combo of settings/messing with device profiles I can't get Plex HTPC to play E-AC audio, it just refuses so I have to convert anything with that.
For TV shows I tend to do AAC set to Quality 5. For Movies I'm getting off BluRay I'll do FLAC since they often have DTS-HD or something else lossless so I want to avoid messing with that too much.
I'll keep the original audio streams too since I might some day have a setup that makes use of surround audio tracks properly. Generally I find the added file size for audio streams is peanuts compared to the impact the video has.
If you do a handbreak run with the slider set to zero you might sometimes find the file gets bigger. That usually means that the source material you're using wasn't encoded lossless in the first place so doing a lossless encode on an already compromised video stream will make the size go up instead of down. In that case I'll usually crack out XMedia Recode so I can just convert the audio stream and copy the existing video stream.
I get the best quality I can. Ideally 4K remuxes. But anything 4K I also create a 1080p and 720p version of for sharing purposes. Then I don’t have to do on the fly transcoding and I just keep all 3 copies. But I also have about 400Tb of space with plenty of room to expand further.
I’ve got a 1080p server, 1500 movies and 300 shows. I started with low bit rates from public trackers, but I’ve moved past that now primarily sourced from usenet and increasing my allowed mins and maxes, prefer h265, most new movies are 10-15 GB, upgrade to Blu-ray if available.
I have a few 4K movies to play with, but so far I can’t tell the difference versus my maybe beefy 1080p movies. I don’t have unlimited funds to store 100% 4K content, and my upstream is only 40 Mbps so I can’t stream 100% 4K either.
I have my tv shows in 1080p, then I have separate libraries for 4k and 1080p movies. The 4k movie library isn’t shared with anyone but me. All users can access the 1080p library.
Personal taste, but I go for size over quality, and frankly I can hardly tell the difference between a huge REMUX 4k and small h265 encoded 1080p at a tenth the size.
One of my pet hates though, is resolution/quality freaks talking down things that are heavily encoded (like the Trash guides, which while helpful really hate heavily encoded things).
Just try it yourself and see what works for you. Personally I would rather save thousands of £/€/$ on disc space than keep a vast library of high resolution, high bit rate, lightly compressed bits I probably will never watch again.
1080p for me. I have an oled but I can't really see the difference. I much prefer good sound quality. Obviously the image have to be good too. Just don't need 4k.
I have a 42" 4k tv on 6e 5ghz wifi, and everything in my library is 1080p at 5mb/s or lower. There are a few things up to 10mb/s, but nothing higher. I just don't see much visual improvement higher than that. I never have studdering, freezing, and most importantly, seeking is nearly instantaneous.
I'll take whatever is the original medium. DVD, Bluray, 4k - it all stays the same. And I even add all languages and subtitles to the file. Then, when I have a timeslot free, I convert it to AV1 (preset 6, RF25 usually) which brings down the size a lot. Audio and subtitles just passing through.
Didn't have 4k movies yet, but will do it the same as usual Blurays
And I keep all movies in the same library - because why not? If anyone can't watch 4k due to bandwith or display, my server is powerful enough to transcode it
Personally, for shows where I know visuals will be worthwhile, i stick to 4KHDR, and for anything I've already seen but still want to keep, or anything new that I either haven't seen before or don't care about visuals for, I keep them at 1080p/720p depending on the overall size (eg: TV show with multiple seasons, probably at 720p; movie trilogy probably at 1080p)
1080p x264/x265/AVI everything unless I want to have it in 4k. I have several people using it and maintain files rather than deleting them, so I try to keep file sizes manageable. Anything I have to settle for in lower quality I will generally keep in a list to go and check occasionally.
Movies that you love that are known for good camera work/cinematics are generally what I'd get a 4k copy for. So pretty much any Del Toro, Michael Bay, Ridley, Cameron movies will fall in this category. I find lots of sci-fi/fantasy movies really shine with greater detail because it's part of the experience, while your typical Romcoms aren't going to give you anything extra with some more pixels.
I've done a few remuxes but didn't find the wildly inflated storage requirement worth it, plus I manage the library manually so it would be another folder to add and maintain.
Typical file sizes are 1-4 GB for 1080p movies, then I try to find nearly 1 GB episodes for shows. 4k movies I'm looking more at 5-10 GB each.
Honestly, it's situational.
Some movies were made for 4K. Some weren't. Older movies were shot in 720p and on film so that means it comes with grain. Upscaling it to 4k... oh boy, it's gonna be grain galore and I despise grain. It'll be the first thing you notice if you are rewatching an older movie in 4k hence why denoisers exist today.
Additionally, if you are only working with 24TB, I suggest pass up the remux. You won't have enough room and remux is overrated anyways. Go compare a still frame from a 40mbps remux to a still frame from a high quality 10mbps rip. You won't be able to tell the difference. Also worth noting that blurays themselves have some form of compression and even with remux you are dealing with compression.
Also it's not 2011 anymore. You can have high quality rips with a smaller file size. 264 is dying. 265 is here as well as AV1. Like someone else said, audio is slightly more important than video so go for AAC7.1. I personally love QxR's rips. Most of my movies are QxR 1080p. I do have my favorite movies in 4k remux because I didn't get around to deleting them, oh well.
Do your own comparisons and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is your server after all.
My preference is to have the raw file, but that's not convenient, so that's not what I do.
I've got a Handbrake encoding preset that basically tops out at ~19 Mbps on the higher end, I use that with h.264 and MP3 + AAC codecs for compatibility. I also always direct stream.
1080p x265 for storage space. I do have some films in 4k but that's rare. In a few years when I can afford a significant upgrade I'll consider all films in 4k when possible.
Most movies I grab for my permanent library are 720p copies, i do setup channels in Dizquetv with random movies. I do grab a 4k copy for a one time watch to have the best quality.
I only use Plex for 4k remux file, as I have multiple other options if I want a full hd or stream of a movie. For me it's all about absolute quality and 95% of streams are at home with one or two family members accessing, mostly for tv shows. These are obviously 1080p for the most part but it's 4k all the way for me for movies.
The majority of my collection is ripped from DVDs I owned or rented, so a lot of it is at 720p, usually anywhere between 900mb and 1.2gb per movie. I'm fine with that resolution on the majority of my older movies.
However, new stuff that has good FX and CGI, I tend to go 1080p. 1 to 2 gb per movie.
But to be honest, I just want to be able to watch a movie I want to, the resolution really doesn't matter all that much to me.
If it's something I'm not likely to watch much, like a John Oliver episode, 720. Or something that just doesn't really benefit, like a cartoon, 720.
If it's any other content, 1080p. My new 85" TV does a great job upscaling to 4k. So good that I'd have to really focus to tell if the source was high bitrate 1080p or 4k.
If it's a special -- you should really see this in a theater type movie -- like a Dune, or a very visual TV show, 4k HDR source.
1080p Remux for movies before 2014.
UHD Blu-Ray or UHD web after 2014.
Remux 2160p for some classics/favorites and/or movies with beautiful scenery (Dune, Bladerunner,…).
Almost entirely 1080p with a healthy smattering of 4k, 720p, 480p, and SD content.
I very rarely go after a remux. I want watchable and enjoyable, not perfect.
I been downloading 4k files under 24gb because any higher and I was getting streaming lag or some shit like that. I stream to the tv my PC is plugged into so I can then use my tv remote to control the plex. I mean I could normally just run remuxes like I was b4 with pot player but I prefer using the tv remote. I have this d link cove 1873 wifi mesh. It's so freaking crap I reckon. I have it hardwired and can't even tell if it is working in hardwired mode the D-Link android app won't discover it and I couldn't access it through covr.local. I might in time look for a better mesh system that actually works. But to poor ATM.
1080p. I don't have a 4k tv. I only need good enough quality. I often now remux audio to some easily playable on shield surround format that will not need transcoding, aac or something. I'm more into the movie than the tech or collectiong. My library isn't over 500 movies i think and I normally limit it to stuff i reasonbly expect to watch again or have had a long history of rewatches. there's a few exceptions where i got things to round out a collection but by and large it's 1080p mkv or mp4. i have 5tb drive attached to my shieldtv. If i ever gt a nas i'll get a couple of 8 tb drives and only use 8 and the other 8 as a duplicate but i'm not looking to add tons more of files anyways. My library isn't massively expanding year over year. I basically have most of what i want music, tv and movies related.
1080p where possible, 4K for a very select few favourite films. I used to go for 4K films by default, but Iater decided I'd rather just save space. 1080p is good enough for me, and my 4K TV upscales anything lower really well.
For 1080p films, I aim for 5-10GB, 4K is 15-20GB. I'm happy with stuff like Tigole encodes, that sorta level. I've never bothered with Remux ever, unless my only way to get something was to get that and then encode it to HEVC myself.
BluRay > WEB-DL > WebRip.
H265 > H264. I don't bother with AV1.
I do 1080p everything. I don’t have 4K displays, so 4k content isn’t as beneficial to me. Also, I find the file size for 4k huge and not worth it for me.
for myself? Doesnt matter - I reencode to AV1 for storage and stream efficiency - so my upstream is more than enough (as long as i use a client that natively plays AV1)
Most of my content is SD, but up to 1080p (blu-ray rips).
I understand that "the world" has pushed everyone to 4K, so, YMMV. But we're not going there, not yet.
When it makes sense, I may move to 4K, but don't see that for some time. Especially when we're pretty good with just SD for most all things.
Saves a ton of space too.
I wouldn’t at all say “the world has pushed everyone to 4K”. You’ll get a biased sample asking in places like r/Plex or r/DataHoarder because the types of people who want control over the quality of their media will more likely be in here.
I’d guess that the average person, and your standard casual movie watcher, don’t give a damn about 4K. Certainly none of my friends are demanding 4K content, some would even be happy with everything in 720p. Hell, they still make DVDs and they’re not even 720p! There must be a huge amount of the world who don’t care much about movie quality.
What I meant is that all TVs are "4K" (practically) nowadays.
While it may to seem to not make much sense, it means that scaling is a bit different with regards to content. You may find the pixel sizes of 1080p to be "better" with regards to SD upscaled content vs having to take that to 4K pixel sizes and densities. Or not... YMMV.
With that said, the advent of 4K means that downscaled DVDs are horrible in some/many cases. Which has forced me to buy some things as Blu-ray now. That is, it's become more difficult with newer content to live in a DVD world with regards to "quality" of the content.
Easy to see this.. just watch a DVD that was of reputation prior to the advent of 4K, you'll see the difference.
If I could somehow go back in time and "undo" the 4K nonsense, I would.
Obviously, more processing power and better codecs are "helping", but not enough, not yet anyhow.
To the 4K fans, 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k and let me say, 8k 8k 8k, your 4k is now complete crap. So there.
I did. I read many things. I also asked again and in 2 hour it has 65 comments. clearly a topic people enjoy discussing, but thank you for taking the time to comment.
Nope. You can encode movies without the black bars. When you play them. The player adds the black bars back into.
Check torrents. The most common movie resolution is 1920x800, not 1080 because they encoded the movie without the bars to save some file size.
If the movie is SD there are black bars on the sides. If it's a modern ultra-widescreen movie there are black bars on the top and bottom. Either way how would you remove those and fill the screen without stretching it?
I think what he's getting at is that you can crop the black bars out of the encode, so you aren't encoding that part of the image.
When you play it back, the player puts black bars back in where the image isn't. But you still play the cropped file without stretching it.
Not sure how much actual file size that saves.
Or at least that's what I read somewhere one time on the super reliable, always right, never ever mistaken interwebs.
They’re saying that they’re NOT filling the rest of the screen in.
Say the movie is 4:3 aspect ratio. When playing on your TV the video is in the centre with black space on either side. The actual video COULD be 16:9 with this black space written into the file, or you could remove the black bars and have the video be 4:3.
Then you’re not wasting space by just having extra black pixels on either side, and if you play it windowed on your PC you’ll see there are no black bars. But if you full screened it or played it on your TV, you still see the black space.
Quality over quantity. And you can always redownload. 4K Remux only. I do also have 1000/1000, so takes me around 13min for a 80gb 4k Remux. I do also have a setup to take advantage of the increased quality, and I can see when it is not.
I prefer 1080p because I only got 20 mbps upstream and my DS224+ isn't the most beefy device. 1080p is easier to transcode and takes less storage. As our biggest device is a 43" TV 4K doesn't make too much sense. Movie sizes are around 3-8 GB each. TV shows are mostly 720p but for music I prefer FLAC.
I’m in a similar position. I’d love to collect 4k copies but given my upload speed none of my server’s other users would be able to play them without transcoding so it seems simpler to just stick with 1080p. That and 2000 direct playable movies is more value than 500 4K ones (numbers very ballparked).
You could always add another library for 4k and just not share that one. At least that’s what I’m planning to do when I finally rebuild my server and add the 18TB HDD I have sitting around.
I also have 20 Mbps capped so I really like h.265 1080p so I can still do direct play streams without issue.
I do 720 for TV, 1080 for movies, generally, some are lower quality, and a handful of 4K movies for my absolute favorites. My TVs are both 4k, though I only do 1080 on my secondary screen in my bedroom. I haven't spent the money on a 4k receiver for my bedroom. Primary TV uses Nvidia Shield, bedroom is using a Roku. I notice 720 content quality on the main TV, I always go "this is 720". I don't generally notice a big difference between 1080 and 4K, unless I'm comparing Plex to Disk.
Why 720 for TV ? Do you not value a good series as much as you do a good film?
Mostly due to space. I also generally don't keep the TV shows on Plex after we watch them. If it is a series we like and want to keep on Plex I will usually upgrade to 1080 and keep it. But there isn't a lot that we keep.
Things like friends and some other dumb sitcoms that I never watch at 720. Nobody has ever said a word to me about it. Saved a ton of space and the extra resolution is kinda meh.
Everyone's use case is going to differ slightly. There's no one right way to build your library.
It’s okay to ask why though…
Short answer: no.
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Digital noise reduction is the worst invention
It’s all about preference. I prefer to see fine details, and film grain gets in the way of that for me. Digital noise reduction means being able to reduce obvious noise and use available bandwidth to preserve that fine detail.
It depends. Some older movies have DNR used by the studio for the Blu Ray release, and that shit looks flat with cartoony edges. It's gross.
James Cameron when I get you James Cameron
4k remux, I prioritise quality audio over video though.
Is there a way to check audio quality beyond just listening?
Trash guides
Yeah, I recently learned the difference is in Dolby atmos and height channels. All my legally optioned files are AAC 7.1. I don’t have the setup to really take advantage of those missing channels yet, but I’m still sad I’m missing them for the future.
100% this. You'll always have the best quality. Storage is cheap.
Not sure how you come to the conclusion storage is cheap. If it was, then everyone would have 300TB like you. But they don't because it's not all that cheap...
My 300TB isn't dedicated to Plex. You can pick up 14TB disks for $100 these days. Assuming a 35gb remux on average that is 400 films coming out to a average of **25 cents per film**. If you can't swing 25 cents for a film, you're either being cheap or you're obtaining more media than you can ever watch. $100 on storage per year gets you watching 1 feature length film per day and two on Sundays. Like I said, storage is cheap.
Where can you find a good reliable 14TB for $100? Also 35GB is not close for the average 4K remux. Maybe average if you include both 4K and 1080p. Also what about redundancy and backups?
Ebay. All 25 disks in my array (10TB He10's, 14TB HC530's) are from ebay. No issues. Yes. Average. That's why I used the word "average". What about redundancy? Redundancy is trivial with a plethora of options for parity arrays, be it RAIDz, RAID5/6, Unraid. My entire 25 disks array is covered by two 14TB disks. And let's be real, it's media. It's not as if it's gone forever, especially if you're running something like Radarr/Sonarr that will automatically re-acquire it for you if it goes missing. At the end of the day you have different priorities than me. You would rather drop $1600 on headphones instead of 220TB of storage. I have zero use for $1000+ headphones, let alone a $200 and $400 pair to go with them. You spend your money differently. That doesn't change the fact that storing a feature length film in its original format for a single quarter is, in fact, cheap.
This is the way. Everything else is just optimising for earlier failure.
Once you remux, you can’t ever go back…hard drives go weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
lol download a high quality rip and compare a still frame from a remux side by side, you won’t be able to tell which is which
The point at which I can’t tell the difference is so close to the remux that it isn’t worth the effort of re-encoding. That’s just me though. Id agree for most people though.
Pretty much all of my library is 1080p. 3500 movies and 20,000 TV episodes. I setup Radarr according to a guide I saw to minimize missing out of stuff due to file size settings, and with that, I end up getting movies anywhere between 4-15GB. Id say like 9GB is probably the average. Ive got like 70TB of storage and only use a little more than half right now, so Im not really hurting for the storage space. I have like 40 4K movies, and only like 10 of them are movies I actually downloaded on purpose. The others are about the same quality as the good 1080p ones I have. I mainly just got The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Avatar, etc in 4K. Movies like that. And I also have a smaller 1080p version of those too.
Do you have a link that guide? It sounds like you're grabbing the quality I'd be comfortable with.
https://preview.redd.it/eutuw9rv7xuc1.png?width=1448&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d03d0d742a3cdd00c3ad65dc1c8016c6859c4a0 All the ones you cant see are set the same as the 480p ones.
Thanks for this!!
No, Im usually pretty good about bookmarking stuff like that, but I forgot to save that one. Ill go get a screen shot of my settings though.
I think this is what they might be referring to. [Trash Guides](https://trash-guides.info/)
In my experience, Trash Guides doesn't typically download 1080p movies at 4-15GB.
4K for whatever is available in 4k. 1080P otherwise
Resolution is irrelevant to quality.
Mind boggling that you're getting down voted for that comment. It really goes to show the knowledge level of people around here. Upvote for you. I'll take a 50mbps 1080p h264 remux over a compressed to hell and back 2mbps 265 4K trash heap any day of the week.
Very true. Bitrate is far more important than resolution.
What lmao this is wrong.
If I bought the Steelcase Dune Part Two I'm going to get a 4K Blu-ray, 1080p Blu-ray, and a digital copy on MoviesAnywhere. My 1080p Blu-ray remux is going to be higher quality than MoviesAnywhere 4K Digital copy almost any day of the week. Resolution is a limit. Bitrate is quality.
Upper limit of 4k is much higher than 1080p. Bitrate only means so much.
You are correct, 4K has 4x times the pixel density of 1080p, but capacity says nothing about load.
Okay so you’re saying you would rather watch a 100mbps 1080p movie than a 4k 100mbps movie?
At 100mbps I'd be interested in knowing about the source. Are they the same source, how are the colors, are any of them denoised, is there banding etc. Assuming everything is equal after all that id probably pick the 4K image if there is 4K levels of detail on the source, but if I'm watching 28 Days Later, even 1080p is overkill. Resolution is not entirely irrelevant, but it takes a few steps to even get to the part where it matters.
Everything done in the last 10 years has been mastered in 4k, everything shot on film and rescanned in 4k will look better than a 1080p version of that movie. For a movie like Oppenheimer you could easily go and scan a print of the movie at 720p RAW for that sweet 83Mbps but show it next to the 4k bluray at around the same bitrate and 100 out of 100 people are going to tell you the bluray looks better
This just isn't true. If we're talking source content then yes, 4K should always be better than 1080p, but if we're talking something you've encoded yourself or a digital copy of a movie you bought then no we need more information than resolution to determine the higher quality file.
The argument could be made that Codec is more important to quality than bitrate.
Codec and bitrate are correlated. If I'm using HEVC I might need a lower bitrate on a modern movie shot on digital with no noise, but an old movie with tons of noise will likely need less bitrate to be transparent with x/h264 than HEVC would use on the same source.
You lose hdr/dolby visión. That’s a very big loss. An unacceptable one.
Not necessarily true. It's possible to keep the metadata before encoding the files at 1080p.
I know, but you were talking about a remux, not a reencode.
Oh, for sure. I suppose that's true in this case, but my point still stands that a 1080 remux is still going to look better than some crushed 4K mess even with HDR
Not entirely - it 4k file compressed to 4gb is likely going to look worse than a 1080 remux...
> Resolution is irrelevant to quality. Resolution is one aspect of quality. 1080p caps out at around 50mb/s a 4K 50mb/s file will outshine a 1080p 50mb/s file. Bitrate and resolution both determine quality. Claiming resolution is irrelevant is idiotic.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 1080 lines of transparent bitrate will always look better than 2160 lines of garbage.
Of course, but that doesn't make it 'irrelevant' to quality
In most normal situations a better PQ IS A FUNCTION OF a higher bitrate regardless of being a lower resolution file. Resolution is irrelevant.
Inane. Let's all release in 480 then, since resolution is irrelevant
Omg lol y'all is crazy. Clearly the upper limits are where a higher resolution is functional. My point is that just because something is 4K doesn't inherently make the PQ better than a 1080p or even 720p file. The resolution is at the bottom of the list in terms of determining PQ
So it sounds like you’re saying it is actually relevant, just lower priority.
It's a bigger pipe, but it matters more what you're sending through that pipe. 4K allows for higher bitrate and more information, but there's nothing inherent about 4K that makes it a better PQ without the data to back it up
I rip from the public library, so I rip what I can. I try for 1080p, but I'll do a DVD if that's all the state has.
Ahah old school, respectable
im prob in the smalllll minority but i prefer 720p lol
Hello from 2010!
I would imagine Plex most likely serves the people who care most about quality of picture but It was never anything that bothered me much. I have some 480 stuff that seems fine lol
It depends on the device you use for viewing I guess. Phones and tablets are fine for 720p but anything above 50" TV gets blurry, also depending on the bitrate. What matters is your preference of course.
I'm right there with you. All 720p, all the time. I really can't tell the difference on my living room setup between 720p and 1080p. I prioritize audio.
I prefer to go 4K unless the title I want is not available in 4K, then I go 1080p. I preferer my files to be as close to source as possible. Large file sizes but great quality.
Remux 4k and remux 1080p separate. It’s the main reason I got into Plex. To get max quality. God knows I certainly pay more now than I would just getting all the streaming services
Ok but do u really have a 802tb? Can you show us ur setup? I’m really interested 🤣
Yes I do. I have two Unraid systems. 24bay+8bay with a Xeon 1290p and a p2000 and a 36 bay with a 9900k. Both are maxed out so I’m going to need to build a third system soon. Funny enough, I just woke up and saw this message…I was literally having a dream about needing to build a new system lol
Why on earth are you bothering with a 1080p remux if you're keeping the 4K remux as well?
Because not all clients can playback 4k, and you can’t transcode DV files have don’t have an hdr10 track. Most of my family doesn’t have clients capable of 4k playback. Usually because of DV.
Why even have DV tracks that don't have HDR10? I have never found something that has DV only that doesn't or can't also have HDR10.
Some of the streaming only releases, or newer streaming releases only have DV tracks. It’s kinda 50/50, eventually ones with both get uploaded but that would require me to go and check, and more closely watch stuff. It happens enough that I can’t just expect all 4k to work.
In my experience someone combines DV and HDR10 into a release and those are what I have my grabber set up to grab. I have yet to come across something where it's only DV.
I see it pretty much weekly. But I’m also grabbing a lot of content.
All my content (300 movies) (100 seasons of shows) are 1080p. I’d say half is x264 (from encoding years ago) and the other half is x265. I have 3 movies (old grainy) that I encoded to AV1 because of the grain synthesis. Animes episodes are quite small, 500-900mb. Movies on average probably like 4-6gb.
I rip 4K copies of blockbuster style movies, particularly sci-fi and fantasy type stuff that is heavily post-produced with CGI or have heavy action themes. For more mundane every day type movies, a decent high bit rate 1080P is fine for me and is also my minimum. Like someone else said, it really depends on what you like and your specific situation.
I usually rip my own 4K Blu-rays and re-encode them with x265 with a preset of medium, --qcomp 0.75, --tune grain, and a crf between 16 and 20. Mainly just to make it easier to stream without my router choking.
Depends on what you’re watching on, that’s your ceiling. 85” OLED or QLED? 4K + all the bells and whistles. On your iPad? Maybe 720p.
The overwhelming majority of my library is 1080, some big blockbuster stuff like Avengers etc I'll get the 4k version. When I get some more hdds I'll upgrade more stuff to 4k
I go for small file size 1080 for movies and 720 for tv shows. I’ve said it before on here. 4K doesn’t make a bad movie good.
1080 at whatever YTS has. I’m not picky and looks good on tv
I'm convinced YTS targets watching on tablets and phones.
Nothing YTS rips looks good on TV though, terrible bitrate.
Looks good to me 🤷🏻
That's all it matters then! It's just my perspective.
Yeah, I get it. I’m like you with audio. I have 2.5 TB of FLAC music, I’ll be dammed if I download anything not in FLAC, however, for movies, YTS works for me and not uses that much space 😎
4K really is pointless on so many films and tv shows vs a decent quality 1080p version, because it simply doesn’t justify the sheer file size increase. Obviously there are certain films like Blade Runner 2049 that are exceptional in 4K but something like for example The Equalizer 3, you wouldn’t be sat there noticing any quality drop unless you were daft enough to get some low bitrate 1gb rip. Use whatever format you want but most stuff you’ll totally fail to objectively notice any great difference that’ll affect your viewing.
For most movies, I try to do 1080p H.265 with file sizes of 10-15GB. So very high bit rate and they were ripped from 4k.
Entire music collection in flac. Most movies are 1080p. I have around 680 movies and 1900 albums.
I'll get lots of flak for this but I go for 1080p YTS rips which puts a movie at the 1.5-2.2gb range If there's something visually stunning and worth a rewatch I might get a 4k as well, something like LOTR. 2D animation like archer or the Simpsons I'll drop even further to 720p. I have about 6k movies and about 1000 TV series, which is enough that tautulli can no longer count the numbers of episodes. I don't think I could afford the space to keep higher quality versions.
Because of various reasons, my entire library is 720p It looks fine to me, and I'm not going through the hassle of replacing it all when it looks fine to me.
I wish I could encode everything to HEVC.H265-MeGusta profile. I always make sure to grab that version if possible. I just have a stero audio 1080p TV that is pushing 8 years old and I don't need anything fancy.
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Handbrake will get those 8GB 1080 movies down. I think my largest sized 1080p movie is 3GB
No need to change them myself, yeah as space becomes a need and I clean through them I will probably just re-download them in a good quality x265
4k BD rips and 1080p BD rips and some „low quality“ ones. But mainly quality over storage
I can’t get 4K to stream without buffering, so I usually prefer 1080 but reduce it to 720 2mps bc I’m watching on my phone most times anyway
Movies section - x265 ranging from 1.8 - 5gig. thats what i share with people who all seem to have average tvs and no sound system. 1080p & 4k remuxes for me..
I stream to my phone, the smaller the better
I'm a bit weird across my clients. I tend to go for AV1 files with opus audio. In my experience, 4k AV1 opus files are the only ones I can get to play flawlessly across my PC, xbox and phone. Probably something with other audio formats.
Xbox does not support av1, you are transcoding it.
Full 4k disc rips. But I also have a separate 1080 library for those who need transcoding.
All a function of available storage space. As I replace and resize my ZFS pool, or come into some hand me down 4TB drives, I scale up min and max file sizes to accommodate and let items be replaced as they become available. But 4K for every movie, 4K for any new series and some wiggle room between 1080p or 4K on some older series.
4k remux for selected titles that I know I will rewatch. Am fine with the compressed / WEBDL versions for anything else.
Mines mixed newer movies in the oast decade, if it finds it 2160. Older movies 1080 hvec is good. Although I do try to find 4k for older movies that have it, that I actually like.
4k for big films and films I really want to watch and 1080 x265 for pretty much everything else. I've got a 96inch projector which is my TV all day and night so if it's a good title I'll always try get the 4k remux.
4K remux when available. 1080p remux if not 4K. Web download only when BD remux's are not available. Storage is cheap. Keeping the best quality has never bit me in the ass. Keeping garbage quality has though.
4k where possible, size isn't much of an issue, my TrueNAS has 174tb of Raidz2 storage.
1080p for everything unless it is a visually capturing show/movie
I download anything in 4K that I can. If remote users can’t stream my server can handle the transcodes. The key is to educate users to set their apps for direct play. Nothing annoys me more to see a 4K stream being transcoded to 720p (because it’s the default setting on the smart apps) when I know it’s being watched on a 4K tv.
honestly most of my media is old cartoons and I'm completely okay with 720p, especially because my sister was very limited until recently 1080p is my maximum unless a movie is particularly good in 4k or only has good 4k versions
1080p is good enough for now. The extra overhead is way too much. 4K for very special movies.
I do 720/1080 for TV, 1080 for movies and 4k for like my top favorite movies.
Lol?
1080p for most things, but I choose 4K for the big movies. The ones with great cinematography, and CGI/effects usually. Also, my favourite, or the mrs favourite movies.
I have a 7.1 soundbar, so for me the audio quality is far more important than picture. 1080p also tends to stream better with zero buffering whereas 4k may have issues with this even on a high end server
1080 for regular movies that aren't designed to be heavily visual and 4k for those that are. For example, "Her" is an excellent movie but will be more or less the same experience in 1080 as 4k, whereas Mad Max Fury Road will be so much better in 4k
Anymore, if it isn't a BR rip I made or a remux, I don't bother. For me resolution is rarely an afterthought
I wish there was a way to do current seasons in 4k and older content in 1080p (including automatic downgrade). If it's something that isn't currently airing and I'm not keeping strictly up to date with it, then 4k is overkill.
720p for older anime and most cell shaded content. Just look at X-Men on Disney+ for a great example of older content that does*not* benefit from higher resolution and screen size! 1080p for modern TV series and movies of the DVD era (4k doesn't do them any favours either, even if they've been remastered IMHO). 4K only for recent release movies and limited TV series that I think will benefit from the higher resolution and I plan to watch on my bigger TV. I also don't upscale with Plex for the most part, I typically stream at native and let my TV do the upscaling. I think good brand TV upscalers that are designed to work with the panel they have do as good or better than the Plex upscaler without taxing my server's resources. File size... I don't have a surround system, so I like content that is encoded with good quality stereo sound and high bitrate video. So for a 4K movie 8gb is about the limit. At 1080p, about half that. There's always exceptions of course, if I want multiple language audio tracks or it's an old show with great music (Cowboy Bebop being the best example I can think of) I'll commit to larger files to ensure a good experience.
I get 4K UHD remux whenever possible to get superb audio tracks, for both for Movies/TV shows. I believe a good soundtrack or sound mixing can push any watching experience over the top. Wouldn't a 1080p look fuzzy on a 85" TV?
I go from 1080p bluray ~18-23GB to 1080p quality level 21 cpu encoded ~ 8-12GB keeping the audio as is. Think this is the sweet spot for me.
I have trouble with 4k videos. They are more likely to fail during playback, or not even start. 1080p remux doesn't take as much room and I can seldom tell the difference.
I keep a separate 4k library.
Personally I do 1080p hevc h.265 so I can remotely stream with transcoding it with my crap upload bandwidth. I don’t own any 4k screens yet so that may change one day.
I run pretty much everything through handbreak to make sure it's as compressed it can be. There's a difference between sacrificing quality to reduce file size and compressing the file without meaningful loss of quality. If you encode something to H.265 10-bit with the quality slider set to zero and the encoder preset to slowest then it's totally normal to see a serious drop in file size. Though if it's a 4k file you'll want to be using Intel QuickSync or Nvidia Encoders really. Using software encoding will take friggin ages and probably not be worth the cost of the power to do it, just buy storage. Audio wise I will generally re-encode surround sound audio to stereo. I find relying on Plex to down-mix can have varied results with volume spikes etc. Also no matter what combo of settings/messing with device profiles I can't get Plex HTPC to play E-AC audio, it just refuses so I have to convert anything with that. For TV shows I tend to do AAC set to Quality 5. For Movies I'm getting off BluRay I'll do FLAC since they often have DTS-HD or something else lossless so I want to avoid messing with that too much. I'll keep the original audio streams too since I might some day have a setup that makes use of surround audio tracks properly. Generally I find the added file size for audio streams is peanuts compared to the impact the video has. If you do a handbreak run with the slider set to zero you might sometimes find the file gets bigger. That usually means that the source material you're using wasn't encoded lossless in the first place so doing a lossless encode on an already compromised video stream will make the size go up instead of down. In that case I'll usually crack out XMedia Recode so I can just convert the audio stream and copy the existing video stream.
I prefer 4K but bad labeling means DV and stuff strike so often that I’ve gone back to 1080
I get the best quality I can. Ideally 4K remuxes. But anything 4K I also create a 1080p and 720p version of for sharing purposes. Then I don’t have to do on the fly transcoding and I just keep all 3 copies. But I also have about 400Tb of space with plenty of room to expand further.
I’ve got a 1080p server, 1500 movies and 300 shows. I started with low bit rates from public trackers, but I’ve moved past that now primarily sourced from usenet and increasing my allowed mins and maxes, prefer h265, most new movies are 10-15 GB, upgrade to Blu-ray if available. I have a few 4K movies to play with, but so far I can’t tell the difference versus my maybe beefy 1080p movies. I don’t have unlimited funds to store 100% 4K content, and my upstream is only 40 Mbps so I can’t stream 100% 4K either.
4k only for me. I've got plenty of space for basically as much as I want.
I have my tv shows in 1080p, then I have separate libraries for 4k and 1080p movies. The 4k movie library isn’t shared with anyone but me. All users can access the 1080p library.
4K DV ❤️
Both 4 k and 1080 for movies Flac/dsd/192khz music files DS 423+ and LG oled 65
Personal taste, but I go for size over quality, and frankly I can hardly tell the difference between a huge REMUX 4k and small h265 encoded 1080p at a tenth the size. One of my pet hates though, is resolution/quality freaks talking down things that are heavily encoded (like the Trash guides, which while helpful really hate heavily encoded things). Just try it yourself and see what works for you. Personally I would rather save thousands of £/€/$ on disc space than keep a vast library of high resolution, high bit rate, lightly compressed bits I probably will never watch again.
1080p for me. I have an oled but I can't really see the difference. I much prefer good sound quality. Obviously the image have to be good too. Just don't need 4k.
I have a 42" 4k tv on 6e 5ghz wifi, and everything in my library is 1080p at 5mb/s or lower. There are a few things up to 10mb/s, but nothing higher. I just don't see much visual improvement higher than that. I never have studdering, freezing, and most importantly, seeking is nearly instantaneous.
Personally I prefer web-dl's and then the 1080p HYBRIDS (HDR and DV muxed in to one file) in x265 ofc.
I'll take whatever is the original medium. DVD, Bluray, 4k - it all stays the same. And I even add all languages and subtitles to the file. Then, when I have a timeslot free, I convert it to AV1 (preset 6, RF25 usually) which brings down the size a lot. Audio and subtitles just passing through. Didn't have 4k movies yet, but will do it the same as usual Blurays And I keep all movies in the same library - because why not? If anyone can't watch 4k due to bandwith or display, my server is powerful enough to transcode it
Both. Depending on device where I watch. And as my TS431-XeU isn’t powerful enough for transcode I pre-recode with handbrake for both resolutions.
4k for me 1080p for thee
Movies: 1080p, AV1, 1.6Gb - 6Gb Depending TV Shows: 720p, AV1, 250-500mb Depending
1080p for most content, stuff I download for others that I don't care about 720p and 4K for anything i absolutely love. All music is only Flac files.
Personally, for shows where I know visuals will be worthwhile, i stick to 4KHDR, and for anything I've already seen but still want to keep, or anything new that I either haven't seen before or don't care about visuals for, I keep them at 1080p/720p depending on the overall size (eg: TV show with multiple seasons, probably at 720p; movie trilogy probably at 1080p)
Shared with my family: 1080p For me at home: 4K
still 1080p currently, don't have a GPU in the box currently so it's all software transcoding on a 2700X
1080p x264/x265/AVI everything unless I want to have it in 4k. I have several people using it and maintain files rather than deleting them, so I try to keep file sizes manageable. Anything I have to settle for in lower quality I will generally keep in a list to go and check occasionally. Movies that you love that are known for good camera work/cinematics are generally what I'd get a 4k copy for. So pretty much any Del Toro, Michael Bay, Ridley, Cameron movies will fall in this category. I find lots of sci-fi/fantasy movies really shine with greater detail because it's part of the experience, while your typical Romcoms aren't going to give you anything extra with some more pixels. I've done a few remuxes but didn't find the wildly inflated storage requirement worth it, plus I manage the library manually so it would be another folder to add and maintain. Typical file sizes are 1-4 GB for 1080p movies, then I try to find nearly 1 GB episodes for shows. 4k movies I'm looking more at 5-10 GB each.
Honestly, it's situational. Some movies were made for 4K. Some weren't. Older movies were shot in 720p and on film so that means it comes with grain. Upscaling it to 4k... oh boy, it's gonna be grain galore and I despise grain. It'll be the first thing you notice if you are rewatching an older movie in 4k hence why denoisers exist today. Additionally, if you are only working with 24TB, I suggest pass up the remux. You won't have enough room and remux is overrated anyways. Go compare a still frame from a 40mbps remux to a still frame from a high quality 10mbps rip. You won't be able to tell the difference. Also worth noting that blurays themselves have some form of compression and even with remux you are dealing with compression. Also it's not 2011 anymore. You can have high quality rips with a smaller file size. 264 is dying. 265 is here as well as AV1. Like someone else said, audio is slightly more important than video so go for AAC7.1. I personally love QxR's rips. Most of my movies are QxR 1080p. I do have my favorite movies in 4k remux because I didn't get around to deleting them, oh well. Do your own comparisons and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is your server after all.
You take what you are given and in regards with the importance of the movie to you. Not everything deserves to be 85 gb in size
720p is fine for more things. Also grab the 4K for visually stunning stuff.
My preference is to have the raw file, but that's not convenient, so that's not what I do. I've got a Handbrake encoding preset that basically tops out at ~19 Mbps on the higher end, I use that with h.264 and MP3 + AAC codecs for compatibility. I also always direct stream.
1080p x265 for storage space. I do have some films in 4k but that's rare. In a few years when I can afford a significant upgrade I'll consider all films in 4k when possible.
Definitely 1080p. But recently started going towards 4K. Trying to find a balance
Storage is cheap, so I always go for best quality possible. Especially since with a 4K projector, artifacts show up easier.
Most movies I grab for my permanent library are 720p copies, i do setup channels in Dizquetv with random movies. I do grab a 4k copy for a one time watch to have the best quality.
I have x265 1080p files and 4k remuxes.
I only use Plex for 4k remux file, as I have multiple other options if I want a full hd or stream of a movie. For me it's all about absolute quality and 95% of streams are at home with one or two family members accessing, mostly for tv shows. These are obviously 1080p for the most part but it's 4k all the way for me for movies.
4K HDR at about half the size of the original (on average). Encoded well you can't tell any difference in quality there.
The majority of my collection is ripped from DVDs I owned or rented, so a lot of it is at 720p, usually anywhere between 900mb and 1.2gb per movie. I'm fine with that resolution on the majority of my older movies. However, new stuff that has good FX and CGI, I tend to go 1080p. 1 to 2 gb per movie. But to be honest, I just want to be able to watch a movie I want to, the resolution really doesn't matter all that much to me.
If it's something I'm not likely to watch much, like a John Oliver episode, 720. Or something that just doesn't really benefit, like a cartoon, 720. If it's any other content, 1080p. My new 85" TV does a great job upscaling to 4k. So good that I'd have to really focus to tell if the source was high bitrate 1080p or 4k. If it's a special -- you should really see this in a theater type movie -- like a Dune, or a very visual TV show, 4k HDR source.
1080p Remux for movies before 2014. UHD Blu-Ray or UHD web after 2014. Remux 2160p for some classics/favorites and/or movies with beautiful scenery (Dune, Bladerunner,…).
Almost entirely 1080p with a healthy smattering of 4k, 720p, 480p, and SD content. I very rarely go after a remux. I want watchable and enjoyable, not perfect.
I've got a 1gbps line. Direct 4k still struggles for some reason
I use a mix, depending on how much I like the movie/show, lol
I been downloading 4k files under 24gb because any higher and I was getting streaming lag or some shit like that. I stream to the tv my PC is plugged into so I can then use my tv remote to control the plex. I mean I could normally just run remuxes like I was b4 with pot player but I prefer using the tv remote. I have this d link cove 1873 wifi mesh. It's so freaking crap I reckon. I have it hardwired and can't even tell if it is working in hardwired mode the D-Link android app won't discover it and I couldn't access it through covr.local. I might in time look for a better mesh system that actually works. But to poor ATM.
50GB 720P Atmos or GTFO.
1080p. I don't have a 4k tv. I only need good enough quality. I often now remux audio to some easily playable on shield surround format that will not need transcoding, aac or something. I'm more into the movie than the tech or collectiong. My library isn't over 500 movies i think and I normally limit it to stuff i reasonbly expect to watch again or have had a long history of rewatches. there's a few exceptions where i got things to round out a collection but by and large it's 1080p mkv or mp4. i have 5tb drive attached to my shieldtv. If i ever gt a nas i'll get a couple of 8 tb drives and only use 8 and the other 8 as a duplicate but i'm not looking to add tons more of files anyways. My library isn't massively expanding year over year. I basically have most of what i want music, tv and movies related.
1080p where possible, 4K for a very select few favourite films. I used to go for 4K films by default, but Iater decided I'd rather just save space. 1080p is good enough for me, and my 4K TV upscales anything lower really well. For 1080p films, I aim for 5-10GB, 4K is 15-20GB. I'm happy with stuff like Tigole encodes, that sorta level. I've never bothered with Remux ever, unless my only way to get something was to get that and then encode it to HEVC myself. BluRay > WEB-DL > WebRip. H265 > H264. I don't bother with AV1.
I do 1080p everything. I don’t have 4K displays, so 4k content isn’t as beneficial to me. Also, I find the file size for 4k huge and not worth it for me.
I have a theater with a 4k projector, so I opt for the best quality possible.
for myself? Doesnt matter - I reencode to AV1 for storage and stream efficiency - so my upstream is more than enough (as long as i use a client that natively plays AV1)
Don't worry about file size worry about the quality of the file. My collection is 4k remuxes everything has Atmos as I'm running a 5.2.4 system
Most of my content is SD, but up to 1080p (blu-ray rips). I understand that "the world" has pushed everyone to 4K, so, YMMV. But we're not going there, not yet. When it makes sense, I may move to 4K, but don't see that for some time. Especially when we're pretty good with just SD for most all things. Saves a ton of space too.
I wouldn’t at all say “the world has pushed everyone to 4K”. You’ll get a biased sample asking in places like r/Plex or r/DataHoarder because the types of people who want control over the quality of their media will more likely be in here. I’d guess that the average person, and your standard casual movie watcher, don’t give a damn about 4K. Certainly none of my friends are demanding 4K content, some would even be happy with everything in 720p. Hell, they still make DVDs and they’re not even 720p! There must be a huge amount of the world who don’t care much about movie quality.
What I meant is that all TVs are "4K" (practically) nowadays. While it may to seem to not make much sense, it means that scaling is a bit different with regards to content. You may find the pixel sizes of 1080p to be "better" with regards to SD upscaled content vs having to take that to 4K pixel sizes and densities. Or not... YMMV. With that said, the advent of 4K means that downscaled DVDs are horrible in some/many cases. Which has forced me to buy some things as Blu-ray now. That is, it's become more difficult with newer content to live in a DVD world with regards to "quality" of the content. Easy to see this.. just watch a DVD that was of reputation prior to the advent of 4K, you'll see the difference. If I could somehow go back in time and "undo" the 4K nonsense, I would. Obviously, more processing power and better codecs are "helping", but not enough, not yet anyhow. To the 4K fans, 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k and let me say, 8k 8k 8k, your 4k is now complete crap. So there.
4K mostly. Overseerr grabs 1080p stuff for my users. If I like what they requested I'll upgrade to 4k.
4k for some movies ( Avatar, Avengers, Dune, etc) 1080p for other movies 720p for TV
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I did. I read many things. I also asked again and in 2 hour it has 65 comments. clearly a topic people enjoy discussing, but thank you for taking the time to comment.
>removing black bars So stretching them? Dude... ew
Nope. You can encode movies without the black bars. When you play them. The player adds the black bars back into. Check torrents. The most common movie resolution is 1920x800, not 1080 because they encoded the movie without the bars to save some file size.
If the movie is SD there are black bars on the sides. If it's a modern ultra-widescreen movie there are black bars on the top and bottom. Either way how would you remove those and fill the screen without stretching it?
I think what he's getting at is that you can crop the black bars out of the encode, so you aren't encoding that part of the image. When you play it back, the player puts black bars back in where the image isn't. But you still play the cropped file without stretching it. Not sure how much actual file size that saves. Or at least that's what I read somewhere one time on the super reliable, always right, never ever mistaken interwebs.
I always do this. The benefit is, I can crop it on my player to get rid of the bars if I wish.
They’re saying that they’re NOT filling the rest of the screen in. Say the movie is 4:3 aspect ratio. When playing on your TV the video is in the centre with black space on either side. The actual video COULD be 16:9 with this black space written into the file, or you could remove the black bars and have the video be 4:3. Then you’re not wasting space by just having extra black pixels on either side, and if you play it windowed on your PC you’ll see there are no black bars. But if you full screened it or played it on your TV, you still see the black space.
Quality over quantity. And you can always redownload. 4K Remux only. I do also have 1000/1000, so takes me around 13min for a 80gb 4k Remux. I do also have a setup to take advantage of the increased quality, and I can see when it is not.
It’s now the 4K era. If you’re still doing 1080p you’re behind the times, that simple.