I have a lot of old movies, most will barely be 720p.

I ripped them off DVDs with MakeMKV and have sometimes 7GB files for 1,5h.

I want to convert them to something below 300MB, I often see more modern torrented movies below that size, so this should totally be possible.

They will only ever be played with VLC (Windows) or Celluloid/MPV (Linux) with hardware decoding.

But what codec to use? h264 and h265 are nonfree, arent they? But Videolan has some free variant of it and Cisco also offers their free version for h264?

Never heard of VP8 and VP9. Then there is AV1 but that seems to only have “264K 360° Surround sound 3D VR” options.

Man I just want to encode normal movies 🥲

What about webm? That is under “web” but probably also good?

I suppose I should use h264 for compatibility, but the web stuff will also be compatible. I would like the best and fanciest algorithms to have least dataloss.

Also, what to use for the audio? I think opus is best.

Thanks!

  • MangoPenguinEnglish
    9·
    7 months ago

    I’d say it depends on what your hardware supports for encoding and for playback.

    Best quality at small size = AV1

    Good with decent support = h265

    Best support = h264

    • digdug@kbin.social
      3·
      7 months ago

      The viewing options OP listed should all work with AV1, I think they were just worried by the preset names. Plus, hardware support should only get better.

      OP, you should be able to adjust settings after you select a preset, so you can pick different dimensions/frame rates/audio codecs/etc.

      Side note, I’ve found that the matroska container is the easiest one for me to use if I want better subtitle support.