Like most people living Life in a Time of Coronavirus (and Trump Adminstration Year Four), I am forever searching for new ways to stave off anxiety attacks, panic attacks, a full nervous breakdown, and extreme boredom while leaving my home as little as possible.
Masks For All Occasions
Sometimes, I buy new masks and now I buy just from here:
Bizzy Bates Creations So far, these are bar none the best masks I have found anywhere. I talked about it on twitter but forgot here so: why I love these.
1.) They fold out to fit your nose and your chin without gapping.
This is my favorite part. The designer was an LPN and obviously got what faces are like in three dimensions and what masks need to do. It fits to the contours of your face amazingly.
2.) Fits under your glasses so no fogging!!!!!
3.) Adjustable straps to fit me and Child, whose head is bigger than mine.
4.) A lot of options for fabric that changes frequently and excellent design work. These are pretty and the fabric is excellent. We have five so far and I just made my July order.
5.) Preinstalled cotton filter and totally washable.
I cannot emphasize enough; I've bought many masks from different places and people, but hers are the best and most comfortable I've tried. The fit is incredibly good, and it fits close but not too close; the fold out means you can fit it to your face. Like, the only way I could get a better fit would be hire a seamstress to custom design one to my head.
Also! She also now sells silk-lined bonnets for textured hair that are gorgeous.
Note: Sherry is amazing; she's warm, kind, friendly, and responds to email promptly. I've emailed her a few times, including today today about the bonnet since I want to surprise a friend with one but since I'm not black and don't have textured hair (and I wanted to surprise her so couldn't ask her), I wasn't sure about maximum hair length or type, as friend does many kinds of updos and braids as well as extensions and Marley braids. She wrote back very quickly to assure me it would fit. I just ordered two--one adult, one child--for a friend and coworker whose been very stay at home since she has a five year old with asthma.
Hobbies in the Time of Coronavirus
I feel like my Shelter At Home learned skill is Ripping with MakeMKV and Encoding With Handbrake Every Movie I Own in All Possible Formats to Play on Anything Then Buying More Movies to Do It More.
And I am well on my way. Currently, my media server is technically 22 TB, because I had to add another 8TB hard drive. Yeah.
After getting NVIDIA Shield TV Pro--RECOMMENDED HOLY SHIT--I hooked up the four bay hard drive enclosure directly to my router via USB 3.0, which works gangbusters. And so.
Drives:
Video
- Size: 3TB (actual 2.68TiB)
- Used: 354 GB
Television:
- Size: 3TB (actual 2.68TiB)
- Used: 1.56 TiB
Movies:
- Size: 8TB (actual 7.22TiB)
- Used: 3.34 TiB
- Movies without a 4K version
Movies2: - NEW!
- Size: 8TB (actual 7.22TiB)
- Used: 4.14
- Movies with a 4K version
The reason for having to get a second 8TB hard drive is my Shelter in Place hobby.
Here's my average for a straight rip of a bluray movie, all English audio and all English subtitles:
4K - 51.7TiB
1080p - 26.9TiB
Now, Where This All Went Wrong
1.) First, I wanted to create a 720p version of every 1080p movie file.
Why?
In case for reasons, but mostly because when playing on my laptop it's faster over wifi or when sharing my Plex server with friends when we do Remote Movie Night.
What did you do?
Using Handbrake, I created a 720p profile with passthru for all audio streams, an AAC version of each audio stream, and all subtitles, then ripped every 1080p bluray rip I had.
What's the Damage?
These actually aren't bad. A 720p encode averages around 8.25 TiB.
2.) Then I discovered it wasn't enough to have multiple resolutions. I needed multiple audio streams as well.
Why?
As of now, my Sonos system does not play Atmos, TrueHD, any Dolby above 5.1, and no DTS at all. And about half my movies were coded in DTS, including the 4K. If the speakers can't handle it, they transcode it or downgrade it, and it sounds weird when you're used to at least surround or 5.1.
What did you do?
So I needed to add following resolutions + audio encodes if a file was DTS only:
2160p with AAC encoding (for 4K movies)
1080p with AAC encoding (for 1080p bluray movies)
To make it easy and batchable like the 720p, I created Handbrake profiles that automatically created an AAC version of every audio stream in the bluray so every single audio stream gets an AAC version (AAC 7.1, AAC 5.1, etc), so effectively doubling the number. Because it's a profile and Handbrake doesn't have an if/else option, existing AAC 2.0 and AAC LC files that don't need it also get an AAC version. While yes, it means there's a lot of audio streams now, when it comes to anything below 5.1, they're comparatively tiny so I don't worry about it.
My other option was to transcode the original audio to the AAC version and not just add a matching AAC audio, but again, I wanted to just get this done and sometimes, transcoding can be weird and I'm still new at Handbrake settings. I was lazy and it cost me in space.
What's the Damage?
While the encoded files aren't larger than the original, depending on if there's a lossless stream, they're still big.
a.) The average 4K rip is 51.7 TiB; the average AAC encode is 38.62 TiB
b.) The average 1080p rip is 26.9 TiB; the average AAC encode is 23.6 TiB.
Yeah.
3.) Future: I want to create a tablet/phone version of each movie.
4.) Future: I want to create a 480p version (aka DVD size) of each movie.
Depending on how long this lasts, I will need a 5 and 6 and maybe start getting 12TB hard drives.
I Blame Spreadsheets
My Ubuntu Server Spreadsheet is the reason this happened, by the way. I wanted to get a full list of all my movies, and I thought, why not organize it? Then I thought, why not pull all vital statistics on a video file? Then I thought, why not create multiple sheets to break down the raw stats into readable information?
This was a process, is what I'm saying. A terrible escalating process. But what, I ask you, is more soothing to someone with ADHD, anxiety, and depression than finding new and amazingly anal organization schemes?
Which means there are the following separate sheets:
DATARO - this is a text file created by a bash script on my server that gets a list of all movies and formats it using information from the file name and location and imported into Excel.
DATAROM - this is a text file created by a bash script that run mediainfo on every single movie file and gives me vital statistics like: number of audio streams, number of subtitle streams, video encoder, source, and the name of each and every audio stream. Yes, this is where everything went wrong.
SPOILER: DATAROM is where eeeeeverything went to hell.
MoviesAll - created by VBA from DATARO. This is a straight list of all movies with the following fields: Title, Size, Unit, Resolution, Format, Date Added, Subdirectory, File Name, and Bytes, which is how I get Size and Unit.
That sounds great, right? No, it's not nearly anal enough. I now had DATAROM.
MovieType - created by VBA from DATAROM. This consolidates all movie files by title and resolutions, so I can see on a glance how many resolutions a movie has and its format(s).
SPOILER: this is how the 'create 720p for everything' began.
MovieInfo - created by VBA from DATAROM. This goes movie file by movie file, pulls the name of each audio stream, and categorizes it in a easy to reference table under one of four audio stream types and twenty-three subtypes: Dolby (8 subtypes), DTS (7 subtypes) , AAC LC (5 subtypes), and Other (mpeg, pcm, and other).
The last one is my beloved because it took me for fucking ever. This is where I learned all about how names have no meaning, all the meaning, multiple names for the same thing, and sometimes, astrology, I have no idea.
Behind the cut is a (very guesswork) breakdown of categorization of audio streams. I cannot emphasize enough how much google and guesswork went into this. If anyone sees this--and bold of me to assume anyone read this far, I don't think anyone is that bored--and wants to correct my interpretation of audio stream types, feel free please God I may canonize you when I get my new religion off the ground.
The way I broke it down was visual so I could skim down for individual names and categorize them to add to the Audio table. So Dolby first, then DTS, then AAC LC, then Other. I can say honestly there are mistakes with the Dolbies but good God you would think standardizing names would be more popular.
Function AudioTable(str)
Select Case str
Case "Dolby TrueHD Surround 7.1"
a = "TrueHD 7.1"
Case "TrueHD Surround 7.1"
a = "TrueHD 7.1"
Case "Dolby TrueHD Surround 5.1"
a = "TrueHD 5.1"
Case "Dolby TrueHD 5.1"
a = "TrueHD 5.1"
Case "TrueHD Surround 5.1"
a = "TrueHD 5.1"
Case "TrueHD Surround"
a = "TrueHD 5.1"
Case "Dolby Digital 3/2+1"
a = "DD 6.1"
Case "Dolby Digital Surround 5.1"
a = "DD 5.1"
Case "Dolby Digital Surround 4.0"
a = "DD 4.0"
Case "Dolby Digital Surround"
a = "DD Surr"
Case "Dolby Digital"
a = "DD 2.0"
Case "Dolby Digital "
a = "DD 2.0"
Case "Dolby Digital 2/0"
a = "DD 2.0"
Case "Dolby Digital Stereo"
a = "DD 2.0"
Case "Dolby Digital Mono"
a = "DD"
Case "DTS-HD Surround 7.1"
a = "DTS-HD 7.1"
Case "DTS-HD Master Audio Surround 7.1"
a = "DTS-HD 7.1"
Case "DTS-HD Surround 6.1"
a = "DTS-HD 6.1"
Case "DTS-HD Surround 5.1"
a = "DTS-HD 5.1"
Case "DTS-HD Lossless"
a = "DTS-HD 5.1"
Case "DTS-HD Surround"
a = "DTS-HD 5.1"
Case "DTS 3/2+1"
a = "DTS 6.1"
Case "DTS Surround 5.1"
a = "DTS 5.1"
Case "DTS-ES Discrete Surround 5.1"
a = "DTS 5.1"
Case "DTS-ES Matrix Surround 5.1"
a = "DTS 5.1"
Case "DTS Surround"
a = "DTS Surr"
Case "DTS-HD Stereo"
a = "DTS"
Case "DTS Stereo"
a = "DTS"
Case "AAC Surround 7.1"
a = "AAC 7.1"
Case "AAC LC Surround 7.1"
a = "AAC 7.1"
Case "AAC Surround 6.1"
a = "AAC 6.1"
Case "AAC 3/2+1"
a = "AAC 6.1"
Case "AAC Surround"
a = "AAC 5.1"
Case "AAC Surround 5.1"
a = "AAC 5.1"
Case "AAC LC Surround 5.1"
a = "AAC 5.1"
Case "AAC Surround 4.0"
a = "AAC 4.0"
Case "AAC Lossless"
a = "AAC 2.0"
Case "AAC Stereo"
a = "AAC 2.0"
Case "AAC LC Stereo"
a = "AAC 2.0"
Case "AAC 2/0"
a = "AAC 2.0"
Case "AAC LC"
a = "AAC 2.0"
Case "AAC LC "
a = "AAC 2.0"
Case "MPEG"
a = "MPEG"
Case "MPEG "
a = "MPEG"
Case "MPEG Audio Stream"
a = "MPEG"
Case "MPEG English - 3LT0N"
a = "MPEG"
Case "PCM"
a = "PCM"
Case "PCM Surround 5.1"
a = "PCM"
Case Else
a = str
End Select
'return
AudioTable = a
End Function
Anyway, that visual breakdown is what alerted me to the DTS-only problem and how I ended up here today. I have no regrets, and that may be worrying.
Posted at Dreamwidth:
https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1078674.html. | You can reply here or
there. |
comments