The Webernets has been running a bit slow lately, so I started looking at ways to speed things up. I stumbled on an article on WPMUDEV titled “How To Massively Reduce Your Images For A Faster WordPress Site“, and I thought I would put it to the test. I downloaded my entire images folder from my server, and here are the beginning stats.
As I am using a Mac, I downloaded the free app recommended in the article called ImageOptim (The article recommended Caesium as a free alternative for Windows users). I was impressed to read on the download page that “ImageOptim is lossless — it compresses image files without changing pixels.”
Opening the program shows a pretty familiar looking window.
I dropped the whole folder in using the default settings and away it went. It took about 50 minutes, and here is the summary it displayed when finished.
And this is the specs on the folder from the finder.
63.9 MB saving is nothing to sneeze at, but I was interested to see if I could push it any further. In the settings, I found a “Quality” slider for Jpegs. By default, it is set to 100% hence the claim to lossless, So sliding it down to 80% will obviously reduce the quality and void the lossless claim, but is the trade off for file size justifiable?
With the Jpeg Quality Slider set to 80, I ran the program again on a copy of the original folder I made before the first optimization run. It took about 60 minutes this time, and here is the summary from the window footer
And here is how the Finder views the folder
110.5 MB Saving on a 330.4 MB original file size is impressive. That’s 1/3! I went through a number of files to check the quality, and even though there is a slight difference if you look hard, for the most part the quality is good.
This is a simple easy guide on how to make the best encodes with the smallest file size in Handbrake without having to know or understand all of the settings. Just copy my settings and you’re done!
**NOTE** – These settings are for DVD Video ONLY – You can find a Blu Ray Tutorial HERE.
Video encoding is a topic a lot of people are very passionate about. Factors like TV size, Viewing distance, hardware, drive space restrictions and a plethora of other concerns are all valid. But if you are like me, and just want to reduce your episodes to a more manageable size, whilst retaining most of the quality, here’s how to do it.
PLEASE NOTE – This method will produce very nice quality videos, that will look good on 1080p TV’s, but may take 2 hours or more to process each hour of video, so my advice is to let it run whilst you are sleeping each night.
Once you have ripped your Disks to MKV files with Make MKV, Open Handbrake (You can download the latest version for free HERE) then press the source button and select the file you want to convert, or if you want to do a batch of files, select the folder that contains all of your ripped MKV’s. Handbrake will import them all, but you will only see the first one. Now it’s time to make some adjustments to the settings.
All of your settings should look like the above screen grab – Click it to enlarge.
1. Set the output format to MKV File
2. Click the button that says “Video”. Make sure the video codec is H.264 (x264)
3. The frame rate should be “Same as Source” and Constant Framerate should be selected.
4. Check Constant Quality and adjust the slider until the RF number goes to 20
5. For the encoder options, slide the preset slider to Very Slow. Trust me, it takes a while, but the quality is far superior, and usually yields a smaller file size. Unfortunately it is a trade off for speed vs quality. Like I said, run it while you are sleeping.
6. Leave “Fast Decode” unchecked.
7. Set Tune to Film
8. Set Profile to High
9. Set Level to 3.1
10. Now click the “Picture Settings” button in the top right side of the window.
A new window will open. Change all of your settings look like this
11. Whilst in the picture settings window, click “Filters” and change all of your settings to look like these as well. Denoise and Deblock will make the picture look SO much better when viewed on larger 1080p TVs.
**If you are in the USA you can skip this step, but for the rest of us, we need to know if our video is progressive or interlaced (the method used to draw each frame of video)**
If your video is progressive, you can skip this step, but if it is interlace, you will definitely want to de-interlace the video before you watch it on a 1080 screen, otherwise you will see all kinds of ugly horizontal lines in fast moving scenes like the image below.
(If you dont know whether your video is interlaced or progressive, Mac users can use Video Spec to find out, and Windows users can use G-Spot to find out)
If your video is interlaced, make sure “Deinterlace” is checked and select “Slower” for best results.
12. Now you can close out the Picture Settings window and select the “Audio” tab in the main window.
I am a real Audiofile, I love the Dolby Digital and DTS 5-7 channel audio tracks in movies, so I select “Auto PassThru”. But, if regular 2 channel Stereo is ok for you, you can configure that in this area if you want. I figure you are converting a DVD, so you might as well have the best sound quality available. Just select the Dolby Digital or DTS sound track from the drop down window, and choose “Auto Passthru”
13. Click the “Subtitles” tab and select none
14. Click the “Chapters” tab and make sure “Create Chapter Markers” is un-checked.
15. You are now ready to start encoding. If you are only doing one file, just press the “Start” button and Handbrake will start encoding. If you are doing a batch of files, open the File Menu and select “Add All Titles To Queue”
16. Press the “Show Queue” button to see all your files waiting to be encoded
17. Press the “Start” button and your encoding session will begin.
This is a simple easy guide on how to make the best encodes with the smallest file size in Handbrake without having to know or understand all of the settings. Just copy my settings and you’re done!
**NOTE** – These settings are for Blu Ray Video ONLY – If you want to convert DVD Video see the tutorial HERE.
My Rant – (If your not interested in my rant, scroll down to where it says “Lets Get Started”)
Circa 2000 I got really pissed off at DVD’s. You start watching them, get relaxed and into the story, and when you least expect it they skip or freeze. Sometimes they even crashed completely. In my experience, the damn things were so unwatchable that I swore I would never buy another one again. Blu Ray has been around for a while now, and it started to feel like time to try again with this new technology. I did my research, and found a player that will play all regions (Regional Encoding – one of the stupidist restrictions in the history of technology), and made a somewhat hefty investment in starting a Blu Ray collection. I purchased all of the Marvel Movies, Agents Of Shield, Alcatraz, and I had been hearing a lot about Arrow, so I purchased a Season 1 and Season 2 box set for $80 AUD. I got through Episode 1 and 2 ok, but at episode 3 the old DVD issues appeared. To cut a long story short, EVERY one of the 8 discs in the set crashes about halfway through, and the last 2 episodes on each disc will not play at all. I cant believe the movie studios get away with it. Can you imagine how many bad discs there must be around the world? Again, they drive us to action that they deem illegal.
In order to watch the show I paid $80 for – I was forced to rip the discs to my hard drive. There are plenty of tutorials out there that show you how to do this, so I am not going to cover that here. Once I had ripped the episodes, each file was almost 6GB in file size. I set about trying to reduce the sizes and found thousands of different ideas and methods. It is a topic a lot of people are very passionate about. Factors like TV size, Viewing distance, hardware, drive space restrictions and a plethora of other concerns are all valid. But if you are like me, and just want to reduce your episodes to a more manageable size, whilst retaining most of the quality, here’s how to do it.
Lets Get Started
PLEASE NOTE – This method will produce very nice quality 1080p videos, but may take 2 hours or more to process each hour of video, so my advice is to let run whilst you are sleeping each night.
Once you have ripped your Disks to MKV files with Make MKV, Open Handbrake (You can download the latest version for free HERE) then press the source button and select the file you want to convert, or if you want to do a batch of files, select the folder that contains all of your ripped MKV’s. Handbrake will import them all, but you will only see the first one. Now it’s time to make some adjustments to the settings.
All of your settings should look like the above screen grab – Click it to enlarge.
2. Click the button that says “Video”. Make sure the video codec is H.264 (x264)
3. The frame rate should be “Same as Source” and Constant Framerate should be selected.
4. Check Constant Quality and adjust the slider until the RF number goes to 25
5. For the encoder options, slide the preset slider to Very Slow. Trust me, it takes a while, but the quality is far superior, and usually yields a smaller file size. Unfortunately it is a trade off for speed vs quality. Like I said, run it while you are sleeping.
6. Leave “Fast Decode” unchecked.
7. Set Tune to Film
8. Set Profile to High
9. Set Level to 4.1
10. Now click the “Picture Settings” button in the top right side of the window.
A new window will open. Change all of your settings look like this
11. Whilst in the picture settings window, click “Filters” and change all of your settings to look like these as well
12. Now you can close out the Picture Settings window and select the “Audio” tab in the main window.
I am a real Audiofile, I love the Dolby Digital and DTS 5-7 channel audio tracks in movies, so I select “Auto PassThru”. But, if regular 2 channel Stereo is ok for you, you can configure that in this area if you want. I figure you are converting a Blu Ray, so you might as well have the best sound quality as well. Just select the Dolby Digital or DTS sound track from the drop down window, and choose “Auto Passthru”
13. Click the “Subtitles” tab and select none
14. Click the “Chapters” tab and make sure “Create Chapter Markers” is un-checked.
15. You are now ready to start encoding. If you are only doing one file, just press the “Start” button and Handbrake will start encoding. If you are doing a batch of files, open the File Menu and select “Add All Titles To Queue”
16. Press the “Show Queue” button to see all your files waiting to be encoded
17. Press the “Start” button and your encoding session will begin.
Using this method I have been able to shrink each of the episodes from about 6GB in size down to about 1.3 to 1.5GB in size, retaining the full 1080p resolution and DTS sound track. The picture quality is very nice on my 42 Inch Samsung LCD TV. I play the files off my WD TV Live Hub and connect using HDMI cables. If you have a larger TV and notice some artifacts or “Blocks” in the picture, tweak the RF number slightly to 24 or at most 23. Adjustment here affects file size and quality considerably, so tread carefully and use small increments.
The quickest and easiest way I have found to keep my video library under control is by using an automatic file naming tool called Filebot. You can view the website HERE.
From the creators website:
FileBot makes organizing your movies and TV shows a breeze! We’ll automatically match your files with information from various online databases. How you want your media files to be named and organized is completely up to you. Our groovy format engine supports pretty much anything!
What I like best about it is being able to customize the output in anyway you please. I arrange my files in folders, so I have no need for the show title to be in the filename, I just like the season and episode number, as well as the episode title. But you can make your filenames include pretty much anything you want by adjusting the output formula.
Heres My Filebot Formula {s00e00} - {t.replacePart(' Part $1').replaceAll("&", replacement = "And").replaceAll("'", replacement = "").replaceAll("!", replacement = "").replaceAll(",", replacement = "")}
Also from the Filebot website, here are some sample naming options:
{n} [{y}] {vf}{af}The Man from Earth [2007] 720p 6ch
Filebot is free to download and use from their website HERE. MAC USERS – If you try to download Filebot through the app store it is not free – It costs $4.99US, but you can get the latest version for free from Filebots Sourceforge file repository HERE. Just open the folder for the latest version and download the app.tar.gz version of the file.
I’ve just stumbled upon a GREAT and FREE file renaming app for Mac users called NameChanger.
Add the files through the GUI or drag and drop files directly onto the App. These original filenames show up in the Original Filename column. See how the names will change as you type in the Renamed Filename column.
Next select how to change the file names:
Replace First Occurrence
Replace Last Occurrence
Replace All Occurrences
Wildcard
Append
Prepend
Date
Sequence
Character Removal
Regular Expression
As text is entered into the appropriate text fields the resulting filenames appear in the Renamed Filename column. As you type each row is updated to reflect the changes you will make.
Finally click the Rename button, and all your files will be renamed as displayed. You will be informed of any files that could not be modified.
Lately, My WDTV Live Hub has been REALLY slow. In an effort to see what was going on, I mounted the drive in my FAV Linux distro PUPPY LINUX. What Puppy Linux showed me, was ALL of the thousands of files that my Windows and Mac OS X computers had been creating and hiding on my drive without my knowledge. When I have accessed my shared drive with my Mac, it had been creating DS-Store files and .AppleDouble files in each folder, and my Windows machines have been creating Thumbs.db files.
It was pretty easy to delete these files, but my question was “How can I stop this Madness from happening again?”. After a little Googling I found a program called BlueHarvest. I downloaded the trial version, and I have to say, within 15 minutes, I had paid my $15 US and had a license key that was good for 3 different Macs. If You are sharing drives or a server in a Mac/Windows/Linux environment, YOU NEED THIS PROGRAM!
After installing, you tell BlueHarvest which drives and folders you want it to monitor, and the file types you want it to clear, and it deletes them as soon as they are created.
BlueHarvest not only prevents these files, it is also the quickest and easiest way there is to clean up a drive of existing files. I have a 8TB server running FREENAS, and to clean it up, all I did was click the BlueHarvest icon in my menu bar and select “Clean Using BlueHarvest”
Then I selected my server…
And then BlueHarvest went to work – check out the result!
It cleaned out 173144 files from the drive!
And at $15, BlueHarvest is a gift! Download the 30 day trial HERE.
**UPDATE** – Ive been using this program for a few days now, and it has been really cool watching it delete these annoying files as soon as they are created. That part has been working great. However, I have been playing around with a program called Total Finder today, and it shows Hidden/Invisible files. I ran it on my Freenas server and to my surprise, it turned up nearly 45000 .AppleDouble files.
I opened up BlueHarvest and initiated another clean on the drive, and after it scanned it reported it had cleaned 4 files. I ran Total Finder again, and it still came back with almost 45000 files.
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The Webernets has been running a bit slow lately, so I started looking at ways to speed things up. I stumbled on an article on WPMUDEV titled “How To Massively Reduce Your Images For A Faster WordPress Site“, and I thought I would put it to the test. I downloaded my entire images folder from my server, and here are the beginning stats.
As I am using a Mac, I downloaded the free app recommended in the article called ImageOptim (The article recommended Caesium as a free alternative for Windows users). I was impressed to read on the download page that “ImageOptim is lossless — it compresses image files without changing pixels.”
I dropped the whole folder in using the default settings and away it went. It took about 50 minutes, and here is the summary it displayed when finished.
And this is the specs on the folder from the finder.
63.9 MB saving is nothing to sneeze at, but I was interested to see if I could push it any further. In the settings, I found a “Quality” slider for Jpegs. By default, it is set to 100% hence the claim to lossless, So sliding it down to 80% will obviously reduce the quality and void the lossless claim, but is the trade off for file size justifiable?
With the Jpeg Quality Slider set to 80, I ran the program again on a copy of the original folder I made before the first optimization run. It took about 60 minutes this time, and here is the summary from the window footer
And here is how the Finder views the folder
110.5 MB Saving on a 330.4 MB original file size is impressive. That’s 1/3! I went through a number of files to check the quality, and even though there is a slight difference if you look hard, for the most part the quality is good.
