[kwlug-disc] OT: Sensible Transcode/Handbrake settings for Blu-ray files

[Charles M]

Good chilly morning KWLUG! I've been ripping DVDs and Blu-ray discs
for several years now for use on the KODI server attached to our
living room TV and shared with a couple of Android boxes in other
rooms. During that time I've been battling with storage problems. DVDs
are not so much of an issue, the file sizes are small, and the quality
is acceptable for the medium. Blu-ray files are the real problem. I
use MakeMKV on Linux (licensed user, was worth it) to rip Blu-rays.
MakeMKV is great, but the resulting Blu-ray files are sometimes very
large (45GB).

I started re-encoding a file once with Handbrake, but stopped once I
realized it was going to take over an hour to re-encode it on my
A8-5600k (16GB, NVidia GeForce 650Ti). Part of the reason I stopped it
was because I had no idea if:

* The video would retain a decent amount of detail (can you still see
details in the face/eyes)
* The size would be much different? Blu-rays are already highly compact AFAIK
* Would the subtitles still be in the resulting file? (subtitles are
important for me)

My solution up to this point has just been to throw more storage at
the problem. At first it was adding a 3TB drive to the existing 2TB
drive, then another 3TB drive, before finally breaking down and buying
an 8TB drive. At the moment I'm just using the 8TB drive, with the 2,
3, and 3 as external backup drives. I'm embarrassed to say I'm running
out of space on the 8TB drive (I blame Game of Thrones).

Ideally wondering if someone has a script to batch process files using
ffmpeg or transcode with reasonable settings for quality?