JAV file size reduction

[Electromog]

I hope this is the right forum to post this as it didn't quite seem to fit in any of them.

Recently, I've downloaded some THZ.LA videos because while they do have a watermark it is fairly unobtrusive. The big disadvantage is these movies are HD and tend to be 4GB plus in size.

Can anyone recommend good (free) software to make a smaller copy? Either with a better codec or by lowering the resolution, but not so much they can't be watched full screen anymore. If possible include what settings to use.

I can't be the only one with this issue and rather than reinventing the wheel myself I'd prefer some tips from people who already do this.

 

[dent80]

Avidemux is a tool that would be suitable, though it is not the fastest, depending on your CPU. I did convert a 1080p thz.la video file to 720p, file size was reduced by 4.63 GB to 2.9 GB. Conversion took about 50 minutes (CPU priority setting high), and I have a fairly fast CPU. So, unless there is a faster method or a better tool, it's up to you if this is worth the time and effort.

 

[Waxaxa]

HandBrake

Settings? They have a good forum, you can find better info there. I usually just use it for iso files. Considering thz.la stuff isn't great quality to start with, you almost can't fuck up.

 

[ding73ding]

I'm a big fan of Thz.la. Their rips are excellent in all important aspects and the watermark is a very very tiny annoyance but at the same time it's also a mark of assurance which does have a practical value. When I see that watermark, I wouldn't need to spend even one minute to check for any issues, e.g. audio sync, unneeded extras (trailers ), playback problems etc.

I've experimented with file reduction for a while now. Long story short: Thz.la files are already fine-tuned. Don't think you can get something for nothing. If you want a small file, sacrifice on resolution. The only sensible strategy is drop to 1280x720 (720p) and aim your shrinkage to be 30-40%. If you drop to even lower resolution, then why do you download a FHD file in the first place? So 720p it is, and yes 720p is more than 50% fewer pixels than 1080p, but don't think you can get 50% reduction in file size without losing quality. Don't be greedy 30-40% is about it.

You can easily shrink the audio track by over 50% (say from 192k to 80k) without any noticeable loss for JAV (I wouldn't do that for other types of movies especially action and scifi, but porn and JAV, fine) but that usually get you only a 1-4% file reduction.

Lately I have pretty much stopped messing with shrinking Thz.la rips. I just buy bigger HDD's.

 

[Casshern2]

H.265?

 

[p.anicca]

I recommend using StaxRip if you have an nvidia card capable (960 or above) to re-encode to h.265 using hardware GPU encoding - (tutorials avaliable just search StaxRip CUDA / H.265 hardware)... you can get 50% file size or even less sometimes whilst retaining a near identical (to the eye) picture... and these only take a fraction of the time of software(cpu) encoding on x.264... perhaps 5-20minutes maximum

 

[Electromog]

Thanks for the tips. I tried handbrake to convert one to a H.265 mp4 at 720p and it came to about 50%. It does seem to take my computer about 30 minutes for every hour of video to convert.

The reason I download FHDs is that in most cases the only alternative seems to be those horrible yellow watermarks, which unlike the Thz.la ones make the movie more or less unwatchable. If not watermarked I'll gladly take something like DVD resolution.

 

[Casshern2]

I recommend using StaxRip if you have an nvidia card capable (960 or above) to re-encode to h.265 using hardware GPU encoding - (tutorials avaliable just search StaxRip CUDA / H.265 hardware)... you can get 50% file size or even less sometimes whilst retaining a near identical (to the eye) picture... and these only take a fraction of the time of software(cpu) encoding on x.264... perhaps 5-20minutes maximum

When I was encoding I loved StaxRip!

 

[Electromog]

I'll give StaxRip a try then, since I have a 1080 GTX.

 

[pikuseru]

I like to download watermark free HD files and convert with Handbrake to 480p for viewing and sharing. For unDRMed 6000kbps WMVs, I set the x264 preset to Slow, the quality to RF21, the tune to Film, resulting in a file around 1/4 the size. For those videos derived from screen capture, they already have added compression, so I have to set quality higher to RF19, otherwise the compression becomes excessive. I always set audio to 128kbps. If I had a faster CPU, I would set x264 Preset to Slower for even smaller file sizes and better quality. For the same reasons, If I was converting to 720p, I would change H.264 Profile to High instead of Main. Based on what I've read, I would forget x265 unless you have an extremely fast CPU and/or are encoding to 1080p or better with very high compression.

 

[ding73ding]

H.265?

In theory, yeah... In practice, H.265 or HEVC may have playback issues on specific (older) hardware and/or OS.

In the future, perhaps near future, HEVC could become mainstream and every PC and phone and smart watch can play it. For right now, file size is one small annoyance I wouldn't trade for the major annoyance of unpredictable playback issue.

I also question if it's the right balance to use an advanced codec (bleeding edge) in order to save resource on something that's already mainstream. 1080p is already mainstream (as of 1-2 years ago?) 3+ GB file for a movie is also mainstream for past year or so. Hardware, and software (codec) and medium (HDD, BluRay) and bandwidth (fibre optic, 802.11G and 4G) are all mainstream enough to handle 1080p encoding and playback using H.264. Those Thz.la guys seem to know what they are doing.

Using a furturistic codec to deal with yesterday's limitations: small capacity (DVD-R?) and small screen (720p or 480p), hmmmm....

 

[Casshern2]

In theory, yeah... In practice, H.265 or HEVC may have playback issues on specific (older) hardware and/or OS.

In the future, perhaps near future, HEVC could become mainstream and every PC and phone and smart watch can play it. For right now, file size is one small annoyance I wouldn't trade for the major annoyance of unpredictable playback issue.

I also question if it's the right balance to use an advanced codec (bleeding edge) in order to save resource on something that's already mainstream. 1080p is already mainstream (as of 1-2 years ago?) 3+ GB file for a movie is also mainstream for past year or so. Hardware, and software (codec) and medium (HDD, BluRay) and bandwidth (fibre optic, 802.11G and 4G) are all mainstream enough to handle 1080p encoding and playback using H.264. Those Thz.la guys seem to know what they are doing.

Using a furturistic codec to deal with yesterday's limitations: small capacity (DVD-R?) and small screen (720p or 480p), hmmmm....

It's entirely a personal preference for personal needs being discussed, here. He's not going to be distributing these to the masses, it is for his use (it seems) so although all what you say is true, it shouldn't be part of is consideration for using it, I wouldn't think.

 

[ding73ding]

Well... yes... mostly... but kinda no also, kinda. It's kinda like smoking, it's a personal choice. It would be wrong for me to rip his cigarette from his mouth. It would also be acceptable to give him The Look whenever he lights up.

Ok may be smoking not a good analogy. More like, he drives 5 extra miles out of his way to another gas station so he can get the Air Miles points. I'm not stopping him of course, but just saying: hmmmmm.....

Ok I admit I do that too... Sometimes I want playback on a wifi device and my home wifi is a few years old and can't stream FHD. So for a select few best vids, I may downsize it to 1-2 GB, but actually that increases rather than decrease the resources need, because now I'm keeping both an FHD for archive and "proper" playback and a small version for playback on mobile devs. So as a personal choice, I kind of stopped do that too. Either I'm going to upgrade my hardware, or... in the meantime, in times when I don't have the access but have an urgent need, I just.... close my eyes and play it back inside my head. LOL

 

[Casshern2]

Whichever way you go, @Electromog , good luck to you!

 

[ding73ding]

About 720p vs 1080p, it does seem for all intents and purposes, 720p seems to be enough. Especially for censored JAV. But 480p is not enough. Even some all time favs like Maria Ozawa and Takao Kitahara, I rewatched their old vids and everything was as good as I remember except now half of my brain is going nuts with the low quality of yesteryear. So... what I do... I close my eyes and play it back in my head, it seems upsampling in my head does work LOL.

Back to 720p. On one hand, it's good enough, yes... objectively it's hard to tell the difference, hard to point to some part of the screen "Aha! you can only see that on 1080p". On the other hand... imagine if file size is not a concern (sorry that just negated the thread topic) then do I want to keep and/or watch the 1080p vs 720p. Absolutely 1080p.

Seems only yestercentury we were happy with 480x360 vids.

At some point, I am sure groups like Thz.la will switch to H.265. And further down the line, 4k? No, it's not a question mark, it's certainty. VR has taught me that yes, sometimes tech advance is just for its own sake.

 

[Avvilimento]

ffMPEG can do it as well if you're OK with using a command line tool. There's probably some GUIs for it but I've never looked.

Myself, I use 10-bit encoding (you either have to seek out a pre-compiled version with this or make one yourself) with the following commands:
-c:v libx264 -crf 22 -x264opts aq-mode=3:rc-lookahead=60:ref=4:bframes=6:b-adapt=2:direct=auto:me=umh:merange=32:analyse=all:trellis=2 -vf scale=1280:720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease -vsync 0 -c:a libfdk_aac -vbr 5

Essentially that's x264 at CRF22, a few tweaks to sacrifice speed for compression and/or quality, resized to 720p (with provisions for weird aspect ratio sources) and AAC audio with ~70kbps per channel (most JAV is 2-channel). Because of the 10-bit encoding mine are even smaller still with higher quality but it does limit the ability to play back through dedicated hardware (BluRay players with DLNA, etc), but the resulting file is about 2-2.5mbit/s total data rate (~1GB per hour).

ed: Many times I find this smaller than the released H.265 encodes as well. They're working to a much higher standard than is necessary for the average viewer, which is nice because it means re-encoding their work doesn't introduce any noticeable issues.

 

[hairy_bush]

How about just editing/cutting the vids, instead of converting them?
A) you get to keep the same 1080p
B) it takes less time than converting
C) can cut 50% or more off your video size, depending on how much you cut. I usually cut out the talking parts.

AVIdemux for MP4
SolveigMM for AVI and MKV

 

[dent80]

HandBrake

I usually just use it for iso files.

I've been looking for a tool for ISO files too, and Handbrake does the job well. However, depending on what quality options you choose, it can take some time (depending on quality) and the CPU runs at 100% all the time.
Meanwhile I gave StaxRip a try for the same ISO and used GPU encoding (Nvidia h264). Finished the job in just 2 or 3 minutes, I was surprised by how fast it was. The downside is though, that for some reason you end up having no audio, which is a dealbreaker for me. This goes for ISO files only, haven't yet tried to convert a 1080p to 720p with StaxRip. I'm really interested in StaxRip now, just need to get to know it better. Thanks p.anicca!

 

[Avvilimento]

With equal settings, StaxRip should be the same basic speed as Handbrake - plus or minus 1-2%. If it's converting significantly faster than it's likely to be much larger or much lower quality, depending upon how they're compromising their settings. There is, of course, the possibility that it's using hardware, but my experience with hardware encoding has been very much less-than-ideal (it's incredibly quick, but the lack of settings such as CRF means it's either lower quality, larger size or both)

Video transcoding has 3 basic elements: file size, speed and quality. Pick two that you want to accentuate, and accept that the remaining one will not be ideal (eg High quality + Fast = Large file).

*ed: Though I guess "fast" is subjective. Using those settings above I can now rip through encodes at 50-60fps on a Ryzen 7 at 3.8GHz. Twice real-time is pretty darned quick for video encoding.

 

[dent80]

With equal settings, StaxRip should be the same basic speed as Handbrake - plus or minus 1-2%. If it's converting significantly faster than it's likely to be much larger or much lower quality, depending upon how they're compromising their settings. There is, of course, the possibility that it's using hardware, but my experience with hardware encoding has been very much less-than-ideal (it's incredibly quick, but the lack of settings such as CRF means it's either lower quality, larger size or both)

I have to admit that I'm not too familiar with all this stuff. But, in my case, I was specifically talking about ripping ISO files, which are DVD quality, 480p. Not really great quality to begin with, and the differences between my Handbrake CPU rip and my StaxRip GPU Rip may be there, but they seem to be so small that I wouldn't care. The missing audio however is too bad
Now, converting a file from 1080p to 720p or even lower I have not tried yet, as I said. Might just have to do that and see for myself how big the difference in quality is.