Congratulate me!!

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

Well maybe it is a littler presumptuous of me to request congratulations but I believe I have accomplished a good thing for me. 

I have almost 4000 movies and nearly 40000 TV episodes. That is not a huge library but it is respectable. They were in man formats and extensions including avi, mp4, mkv, m4v, mpg and divx. Many of the files would direct play while many others (about 5-10%) did not. I scanned my entire library for files that would not direct play on one of my devices and used the resulting list to feed FFmpeg Batch Converter and converted the files into a direct playable format. It took most of several days but now my entire library will direct play on any device I own.

It was a bit time consuming but I think it will be well worth it. 

My library included several files from a long time ago that were converted by my uncle using tools that ae now quite antiquated.

I feel a sense of accomplishment and I believe it will be easy to maintain my library in a condition that will always direct play.

My hardware was quite capable of transcoding as needed but this will mean that it will never be under strain from streaming duties.

I know that what I did is not really a big deal in most folks eyes but I have been wanting to do it for some time and it really feels good to have it done.

Now if only the rest of my life could be made to be in as good a shape as my media library.

[sooty234 266]

But I wonder what sacrifices were made? I imagine some of them might have just needed a remux into a different container. While others may have needed to be transcoded. Making a file direct play, might also cause a degree of degradation. Making any media less than the original, is never a good thing. Unless you wrote an analytical algorithm to decide which media is to be converted, and in which way, I fear that you may have lost what you do not realize that you have lost.

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

8 hours ago, sooty234 said:

But I wonder what sacrifices were made? I imagine some of them might have just needed a remux into a different container. While others may have needed to be transcoded. Making a file direct play, might also cause a degree of degradation. Making any media less than the original, is never a good thing. Unless you wrote an analytical algorithm to decide which media is to be converted, and in which way, I fear that you may have lost what you do not realize that you have lost.

All my media is just fine for my old eyes and ears. I have almost nothing above 1080p and most is 720p or lower. I have no control of the old media's resolution as my uncle left me the files that had been extracted from old VHS and Betamax recordings. Any slight degradation is unimportant for me and FFmpeg is just fine for my purposes. I do not need or want fancy tools or to do deap analisis to make things "perfect." For me good enough is just that good enough.

That is I made zero "sacrifices" in that my media, except for some very very old rips of media looks just fine to me and those old rips are not part of what I changed. They already direct played but they are just poor rips that my uncle prepared many many years ago.

I see no reason to have my media in formats or resolutions that do not look or sound "better" to me. The statement you made "Making any media less than the original, is never a good thing" is simply wrong. If you save space or strain on your computer and you can see and hear no difference then whatever "degradations" happen are totally meaningless.

I have my medai in a format that works well for me and I see no reason to try for dubious improvements. 

I think many people worry entirely too much about getting the "best" quality they can when, I believe, they should simply get their media in a form where they see andhear little or no difference.

[skidmarks 188]

Congrats on making everything direct play!  Guess you found something to occupy a "little" of your time!  Maybe a winter project for me, but have no willingness to tackle this right now! 

I know you have no interest in music, but think my next big correction to my media library is going to be getting my music videos to show up under the artist.  It should be quite the undertaking (someone put me out of my misery now)!  I recall trying it once before and it was a complete horror show.

Again congrats on accomplishing this...

[rbjtech 4260]

23 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

All my media is just fine for my old eyes and ears. I have almost nothing above 1080p and most is 720p or lower. I have no control of the old media's resolution as my uncle left me the files that had been extracted from old VHS and Betamax recordings. Any slight degradation is unimportant for me and FFmpeg is just fine for my purposes. I do not need or want fancy tools or to do deap analisis to make things "perfect." For me good enough is just that good enough.

That is I made zero "sacrifices" in that my media, except for some very very old rips of media looks just fine to me and those old rips are not part of what I changed. They already direct played but they are just poor rips that my uncle prepared many many years ago.

I see no reason to have my media in formats or resolutions that do not look or sound "better" to me. The statement you made "Making any media less than the original, is never a good thing" is simply wrong. If you save space or strain on your computer and you can see and hear no difference then whatever "degradations" happen are totally meaningless.

I have my medai in a format that works well for me and I see no reason to try for dubious improvements. 

I think many people worry entirely too much about getting the "best" quality they can when, I believe, they should simply get their media in a form where they see andhear little or no difference.

Well said - and agree 100%

Transcoding it to play it would have resulted in a less quality viewing experience vs doing what you have done which is do this in advance.

I did this myself a few years ago, batch convert everything that wasn't h264 to h264, AAC - so it would direct play.  Did I lose quality - likely yes - but what is the point of having the original on disk (or the VHS tapes in the basement..)  when you can't play it back (easily) anyway !

The fact you can now play it - means you (and more importantly, others for home video) can enjoy it.