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Nothing. It’s an automated. Just stop doing it and it’ll decay with time.
Nothing. It’s an automated. Just stop doing it and it’ll decay with time.
As others mentioned having a good encoder is an issue for AAC. And some skills in using it, tuning, etc.
Nearly all quality releasers now use AC3/EAC3 or FLAC. Tigole is the last one who uses AAC to my knowledge and the rest of the QXR group rolls their eyes at it.
You’re not going to get a meaningful reduction in bitrate and file size with AAC over EAC3/AC3 without loss of quality. We’re talking maybe you can shave 2-300kbps off an AAC version versus an AC3 5.1 track. And it’s tricky. So much so no one other than that one person I mentioned bothers. At least no one accepted in the higher echelons as competent in creating acceptably transparent encodes.
If a source has EAC3 (itself capable of up to halving the bitrate required vs AC3) or AC3 I’d recommend keeping it as they tend to already be efficient. They’re also universally compatible as codecs. Re-encode those big 1500kbps DTS tracks and those even bigger monster lossless Dolby and DTS tracks but I’d leave efficient codecs like AC3 alone.
That said it’s up to you what sounds good. If you’re using lower end stuff and can’t tell the difference after trying a few different test videos with different types of sounds then go for it.
/r/opensignups (sadly the lemmy version seems abandoned at the moment).
Monitor that daily if you can. Torrent leech in particular should be opening their doors soon for open registration (they usually do in spring, if not it won’t be long as they do so twice a year anyways). TL is a great starter and honestly many people will never need more. Very easy to maintain on with great free leech on anything over a certain size which ends up meaning all remuxes and most TV show seasons.
/r/opensignups (sadly the lemmy version seems abandoned at the moment).
Monitor that daily if you can. Torrent leech in particular should be opening their doors soon for open registration (they usually do in spring, if not it won’t be long as they do so twice a year anyways). TL is a great starter and honestly many people will never need more. Very easy to maintain on with great free leech on anything over a certain size which ends up meaning all remuxes and most TV show seasons.
Looking up technical specs for the drive it’s often mentioned on data sheets (often as conventional magnetic recording drive or else shingled if SMR). Other than that third parties have compiled lists and many but not all Amazon pages in tech specs mention it if you look closely. Try searching drive-model and cmr and then smr and see what comes up. Beware some drive families different sizes of drive may be cmr vs smr. WD red pro and ultra star DC line are all CMR, WD blues many are SMR. WD black as far as I know are all CMR. WD red (non-pro) can be SMR I believe.
I’ll be honest, the real difference is getting a 7200 vs 5400 RPM drive, particularly one with a larger cache, I’d always go for 7200 except for purely offline backup stuff.
In terms of external drives and shucking, it’s largely a crapshoot. You can try searching what drives others found in a model, however they’re subject to change.
Bottom line: If money is tight and it’s just you, you can absolutely do SMR and 5400 RPM external drives and have a smooth experience as long as we’re talking re-encodes not raw Blu-ray remuxes (I have seen an external 5400RPM SMR drive choke and fail trying to smoothly play a file at 24MB/s bitrate but it worked fine with 10MB/s re-encodes, even those with burst rates of 17MB/s). If you can afford a bit more try to go 7200 and CMR.
Beware MDD at the top is alleged to sell drives they’ve refurbished which are essentially used but with wiped smart. Other cheap deals… check sellers. If it’s not sold and shipped by Amazon it could be slightly used drives (usually third party sellers do a mix so some people get brand new, others not so much). Also beware third party sellers and Amazon itself often sell OEM drives without warranty. I always check the serials online before opening the anti-static bag to make sure it’s in warranty.
Also: shucks.top
You need to wait and watch for the good deals but they come around multiple times a year.
Also, understand there are certain storage ranges to get these prices. Generally 8-18TB drives are best deals per TB. You pay a premium for 20-22 top size drives as well as for smaller drives like 2-4TB. 14TB seems to be the current sweet spot most of the time.
Lastly. Understand SMR drives are alright for backups but not ideal for streaming high bitrate content from or using to seed files. CMR is better.
OP said money was tight.
And why pay more for less? Over the purchase of 3 hard drives I save enough to get a fourth “free” off the difference in savings.
$4x14tb=$56 for example.
But please. Continue to pay whatever you want. More cheap drives for me.
$20/TB is a bad deal.
You can get WD Red Pro’s on sale twice a year for $16/TB.
Further you can order unused data center and enterprise drives for anything from $11-$16/TB and those things are built to take way more use and abuse than home users can throw at them.
I would not pay above $17/TB for traditional magnetic spinning disk storage.
According to the email they sent me:
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/18730324957213-How-do-I-back-up-my-cloud-saves
You can do it from gog galaxy. No idea if the game has to be installed though :/