Encode or buy more storage?

[Strayan_Hades]

Hi,

 

Just want to hear some peoples feedback regarding if I should encode all my media or spend $300 or less on a 6TB HDD to keep my media lossless for my Plex server.

 

Encode = time

HDD = Money

 

Cheers

[WereCatf]

Personally, I don't really see the point in lossless rips; you could use e.g. HEVC at 30Mbps and it'll look more-or-less lossless anyways, but take only a fraction of the amount of space. Then again, it's difficult for other people to tell you what to do as it's your time and your money: is $300 worth more to you than the time and effort it would take to re-encode everything?

[Mat1926]

18 hours ago, Strayan_Bass said:

Hi,

 

Just want to hear some peoples feedback regarding if I should encode all my media or spend $300 or less on a 6TB HDD to keep my media lossless for my Plex server.

 

Encode = time

HDD = Money

 

Cheers

What type of media you are talking about? If it is audio like MP3, these are lossy and you should keep them as they are. If you have Flac files, yes you can encode those to something like MP3 320 CBR...

 

Regarding videos, lossless videos like full discs of blurays and dvds or remuxes of blurays, also those you can encode them to to HD or SD its up to you...If you have lossy encodes like for instance x264 video plus DTS or DD audio in mkv container, then also don't re-encode those, leave them as they are....

 

My advice, just spend the extra cash on extra space and don't waste your time re-encoding. Encoding lossless music files to lossy, could be straight forward and quick. However, encoding full BluRays properly to x264 for instance require a lot of time and knowledge of many variables....the process is really slow...

 

Good luck,