Comment on Honey, I Shrunk The Vids [Mr. Universe Edition] v1.0.5
GreenCrunch@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day agoTranscoding media is great for saving space. My server has but a humble ancient 1TB hard drive (shared with other storage uses). From a DVD (mpeg2), an episode of this one TV show is 1.6-1.8 GB. After transcoding to AV1, it’s 200-400 MB, and I can’t tell the difference in quality.
I use Veronica Explains’ helpful HandBrake guide, she provides some settings for AV1, which work very well for me (I just saved it as a new preset).
https://vkc.sh/handbrake-2025/
And you can do batches of files by opening a directory and adding all. I haven’t tried OP’s tool so I don’t know how it compares to HandBrake, but that works fine for my use case.
yakko@feddit.uk 1 day ago
This looks promising! My main use case is Jellyfin through Android TV, and it looks like AV1 has support for that. I currently have about 6 Tb of kids cartoons that are eating up most of my media server, would be great to shrink those slightly.
I think before I try this, I’ll want to spring for an offline backup of the library, then begin transcoding… I need one anyway, at least now I’m excited enough to actually do it!
obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 1 day ago
My advice would be to try transcoding one or two media files first, and test the transcode on different devices. HISTV gives a lot fewer options than Handbrake, but the idea is minimal effort, maximal compatibility.
Specifically, AV1 is a newer standard, and not supported on devices older than ~2020 I think. HEVC (aka x264) produces slightly larger files but works on devices back to 2016 or so, and MP4/H.264 gives yet bigger files but compatibility goes back even further.
For video file size the main things you want to real are the target bitrate and, secondarily, the QP numbers: https://www.w3tutorials.net/blog/what-s-the-difference-with-crf-and-qp-in-ffmpeg/#quantization-parameter-qp-definition–how-it-works
For good quality at a reasonable size you can use the default values of 20/22 but to save a little more space you can probably bump these to 24/26. I went with QP instead of CRF because it’s better for streaming (while still giving better perceived quality than a constant bit rate).
Handbrake is great, does all this and more, but that was my problem with it - the controls look like something out of a space shuttle and I just don’t need all that most of the time 😅 I’d love to hear how you find using HISTV vs Handbrake, if you give it a go! 🙌
yakko@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Thanks, I’ll remind myself to report back when I dive in! Ordered the backup drive today, so it’s already in motion. Like you I’m pretty laid back about my video editing work. Simple is good. I do edit a clip show for my kid every week these last two years so I’m at least slightly aware of these ideas, if only as a dilettante.