davilla Wrote:You are wrong You are transcoding the raw, bluray into another video encoding format. No compression going on here, simple transcoding. When you misuse the term compression, you do nothing but confuse new users.
It seems to me that we're arguing semantics, but I'll certainly defer to your expertise. My point was simply that the average person wouldn't know what transcoding means, but is familiar with the term compression, and when they think of compression they think of reduced filesize. A 25GB MKV Blu-ray file can be converted into a 4GB 1080p MP4 file by way of transcoding, and the result is a compressed (filesize) end result. So when I'm referring to compression I guess I'm really talking about the end result (a smaller filesize), which usually also results in a reduction in picture and/or sound quality, even if (when done well) the average person may not be able to discern a difference.
To that end, I would argue that if you tell someone that you're simply transcoding (changing from one format to another) a movie, it can give someone the false impression that there will be no impact to picture or sound quality, when usually there is. For example, if I use one of the various apps which run on a desktop PC and do on-the-fly video transcoding so as to let you stream your otherwise-incompatible movies to an XBox, PS3, or AppleTV (e.g., AirVideo), these apps are transcoding the video, and it is my understanding that with all of these apps, PQ will be degraded. But perhaps I'm mistaken there, too, since my only experience with these apps has been with my decidedly underpowered desktop PC. I just bought a new i7-2600 machine which I'm anxiously awaiting the delivery of and am interested to see how well AirVideo (for example) does at an on-the-fly transcoding of a 20GB+ MKV 1080p file to a format playable on the native aTV 2G.
Even if it did a great job, though, I don't think I'd want to use it for that purpose frequently as I'd be concerned about diminishing the life of that box and drawing so much wattage all the time. Instead, my plan is to use that new box to convert my Blu-rays into MP4's via Handbrake, and leave it turned off when it's not performing that duty. And even though terabytes of disk storage get cheaper and cheaper, my goal is to get these large files down to more manageable sizes. The fact that the aTV 2G hardware can handle most (non-subtitled) 1080p rips I throw at it is extremely impressive, but there are real advantages to having my movies in smaller filesizes playable by the native box (and iPhone 4 and iPad 2 I have in my household). For example, I'd rather not resort to jailbreaking those devices, and the smaller filesizes mean that I can reliably stream the movies over WiFi, making use of the native aTV's big-enough buffer (when dealing with a 4GB or smaller MP4 movie) to ensure that the movie plays without any hiccups.