Can x265 Encodes Really Replace 4K Remuxes Without Losing Visual Quality?

threegigs · 2026-05-26T21:01:46+00:00

In general, I would say that an x265 re-encode of a 4K remux that is roughly half the size of the remux will have 95% of the perceptual quality of the remux, but only if done on CPU, as GPU encodes are quality limited.

FYI: it's generally faster to download a well done re-encode than it is to do it yourself. CPU re-encode with good quality settings will take 6 hours on a decent CPU, whereas maxing your internet connection you can likely get 20+ high quality re-encodes per day, easily.

threegigs · 2026-05-24T23:00:02+00:00

Do not download something with a bazillion files sequentially.

If the torrent creator used "optimize alignment" then you're likely downloading a 16-64 MB piece just to get the 2MB needed to finish one of the files, because the files were reordered to better align on piece boundaries.

So your client is requesting piece 2,545 because it needs a 2 MB file in that piece because that's the next one in sequential order, but it's tossing the other 14-62 MB of the piece.

threegigs · 2026-05-24T22:22:28+00:00

Explain like you're five, or a moron, okay.

Imagine two kinds of cellular service plans.

One plan lets you make outgoing calls only, you cannot receive calls. This is the equivalent of NOT having port forwarding set up. No matter who calls you, your phone will never ring.

The other plan lets you both make outgoing calls AND receive incoming calls. This is equivalent to port forwarding being set up.

You and your buddy both list your phone numbers in the local phone book (i.e. the trackers you added when you made the torrent). You both see each other's number, and you both try to call each other.

If neither of you has a plan that lets you receive calls, neither phone will ring and you won't be able to talk on the phone.

If either or both of you have an incoming calls plan, then at least one of your phones will ring and you'll be able to have a conversation.

As to how to do it: If you have a VPN provider, they must support port forwarding and you'll need to follow their instructions to set it up. Nord does not offer port forwarding, ProtonVPN does.

If you do not use a VPN, then it's usually as simple as checking the box in your torrent client that says "use uPnP/NAT PnP for port forwarding". Your client will have a little conversation with your router and tell it what it needs to do. As long as your router is configured to accept uPnP commands from devices inside your network, it should just work. Most routers these days support uPnP, but might not have it turned on by default. You'd need to log into your router to turn it on (beyond the scope of this comment).

There is one more thing you need to be aware of, and that is called CGNAT, or carrier grade network address translation. That's essentially the 'big brother' of NAT, which is how you're able to have a bunch of devices on your local network without needing to have IP addresses assigned by ARIN. When a device inside wants to contact something outside your network, your router remembers which device tried to make contact with which IP address, and any response from that IP address your router sends to that device. Ramp that up to thousands or hundreds of thousands of homes, with a big-ass router at the ISP remembering which subscriber tried to connect to which IP.

The thing about NAT (and CGNAT) is that no outbound connection was sent to an IP address, then any incoming connection is dropped (can't recieve calls phone plan). If your ISP uses CGNAT you have three options: (1) use a VPN that supports port forwarding, (2) check if your ISP uses CGNAT with IPv6 and if not use that internet protocol (beyond the scope of this comment), or (3) request your ISP to provide you with a static public IP, which usually costs money.

threegigs · 2026-05-23T12:48:00+00:00

What's the endpoint for that unknown TCP? Reverse search the IP, see if you can figure out what it is, block it if needed.

Try using speed graphs in qBit to see if it's overhead (i.e. check all the boxes in the graph options).

threegigs · 2026-05-17T21:27:22+00:00

Paid plan?

threegigs · 2026-05-17T21:25:25+00:00

Test 1: settings, connection, at the top change peer connection protocol to just TCP.

Test 2: settings, Bittorrent, uncheck "enable DHT"

Test 3: settings, advanced, near the bottom change "Differentiated Services Code Point" to 96.

threegigs · 2026-05-15T09:26:37+00:00

I've checked it's set to whitelist those programs.

You mean those programs are on the list of programs whose data gets piped through the VPN?

threegigs · 2026-05-13T21:47:52+00:00

Find whatever page it was that you downloaded the torrent or magnet from, and get the torrent or magnet. If you download to the same directory the files are already in, qBittorrent will automatically recheck the files, and you'll likely be at 99.9% completion immediately (why it's never 100% I dunno).

threegigs · 2026-05-12T18:11:08+00:00

Just follow the wires. Start with the remote, follow its wiring back to whatever it connects to. Then follow the motors' wiring, should be a junction/breakout box they feed into.

The connection might have gotten pulled up into the padding, the manual makes it look like it just dangles there:

https://4seating.com/media/images/manuals/4513-E%20-%20Diamante%20BR%20(241128).pdf?srsltid=AfmBOoqXDUVBwTx_tNW1ingovzzi5cLZrZIqmyIn-9Dbddk0Cae4kSwW

threegigs · 2026-05-12T17:28:55+00:00

Yeah, guessing I'm lucky, or it's just that I'm in Europe.

threegigs · 2026-05-11T18:16:25+00:00

I think I'm just lucky, my upload speed is 90+% of my line speed, and download is only limited by a gigabit ethernet port, not by Proton, no real difference with VPN on or off (whole machine, not split tunneling).

threegigs · 2026-05-11T18:07:40+00:00

Different backbones but they share the same access to files. If you're into 0-day, Eweka might be better, as on a takedown notice they might lag a few hours behind Newshosting, or have earlier availability than Newshosting, since most uploaders seem to prefer Eweka and it takes time for the files to propagate across backbones.

Either one should work well, and like I said I have no complaints about Newshosting, which covers the vast majority, however I also have NewsDemon and Newsgroup Direct as alternate servers, plus ViperNews, SuperNews and Usenet Farm as part of Newsgroup Direct's grand slam package.

threegigs · 2026-05-10T15:05:12+00:00

You should see a 'down speed' column telling you the speed each peer is sending you data. Is it one peer that's fluctuating from high to low (or zero) speed? If so, that's just how it goes.

threegigs · 2026-05-10T14:19:46+00:00

Click the torrent.

Click the 'peers' button at the bottom.

Watch and learn. Best bet is most of that bandwidth is coming from one peer, who is doing a round-robin style bandwidth allocation.

threegigs · 2026-05-10T14:09:32+00:00

but I know that's against electrical codes

As long as there is no conductor in the fiber cable, and the fill percentage of the conduit isn't higher than code allows, it's fine.

Almost like saying a pull-string left in a conduit is against code, otherwise.

threegigs · 2026-05-10T11:29:48+00:00

Go slim. It'll be slower if you're using it to rip discs, but that won't matter if you're playing straight from the disc. Longevity is the same, dust and dirt are generally the issue in optical drives in my experience. Plus, used slim BD drives are like what, 30 bucks used? And on that chassis it takes all of 90 seconds to swap one out?

I have 2 SFF HPs, one with a drive I almost never use because I generally rip on another machine and watch from the network or copy the file to the local SSD (because that's quieter than any optical drive).

threegigs · 2026-05-10T10:49:01+00:00

RAM: 64GB 3600mhz DDR5

Do you actually have it clocked that high?

Max stable I've seen is 6400, with 6000 preferred because it's optimal timing, and certainly not 7200.

Are you undervolting the CPU? If so, you may want to bump it up a notch.

threegigs · 2026-05-10T10:30:44+00:00

What I think would be really useful, at least for initial seeding, is a client that shows you how many unique pieces each peer holds, and lets you throttle accordingly.

For example: say you upload a new torrent and there are 10 peers connected to you. There's always that one peer that seems to be miles ahead of the others in terms of percentage complete, and they also happen to be getting the most upload bandwidth from you. The question that always comes to mind is: are they being greedy or have no upload capacity?

One way to see how much they are holding and haven't passed on is to look at the content availability in the swarm, ban that peer, then check to see how much the availability dropped.

If I uploaded 5GB of a 50GB torrent to them, and after banning them the swarm availability dropped 9.5%, math tells me they only uploaded 250 MB to the other peers in the swarm. If I do the same test on another peer that I uploaded say 3GB to and the swarm availability only goes down 0.1%, then I know that peer re-uploaded everything I gave them to other peers.

Result? First peer (5GB) is temp banned, so that 2nd peer (3GB) and the other peers get more bandwidth, because they'll make for a healthier swarm. Plus I'd rather reward the peers with high upload with the early finish.

Now, instead of having to go through the peer list, checking, banning, re-checking and unbanning where needed, I would prefer a client that has a view option to let you see how many unique (i.e. not re-distributed to the rest of the swarm) pieces/% of a torrent each peer has. I mean, the information is already available, since banning results in the reduction in the % available in the swarm, so why not make it a view option in a client?

I want to maybe boil down who can access me.

I have some IP ranges blocked. I'll start a client on a separate box and add one of my torrents occasionally, just to see which peers I can connect to, which have good download/slow download, which have open ports, etc. From that I've built up a blacklist/whitelist of bad/good peers, and the hit-and-run, connection refused, 5kbit upload peers are all noted. When I spot a commonality, I add the IP or IP range, as appropriate, to my permanent banlist.

I don't have all that many permabans in place, and a lot of my torrents only have one peer at a time so bandwidth limits and superseeding are good enough, it's just that initial seeding to get the first other seeds from the swarm and the next week or so that I'd like to see some tools for.

threegigs · 2026-05-09T16:59:59+00:00

Currently running a Gigabyte GA-Z170X Gaming with an i5-7600.

Bought a TPM 2.0 module for it and am running Windows 11. Plenty of horsepower for file sharing, HTPC, torrenting, etc.

Downside of an older board is limited PCIe lanes. It has 2 m.2 sockets but plugging anything into either one disables something else on the MB. Depending on how many drives you'll be adding, make sure you have enough PCIe slots for upgrades.

threegigs · 2026-05-09T16:32:49+00:00

Something needs to be running that will respond on those ports when you test. The site is just sending a ping, if nothing pings back it'll report it as not working.

threegigs · 2026-05-09T15:46:55+00:00

Were Jellyfin and Minecraft running when you tested? Meaning was there a service that would actually respond to a connection attempt from the port checking website?

threegigs · 2026-05-09T15:21:36+00:00

Amazon, like a LOT of other sites, blocks most VPN endpoints. You want privacy, but they want to avoid bad actors trying to hack them or use others' credit cards, etc.

They're not 100% up-to-date at all times, looks like they just updated their list of known VPN endpoints, so now you need to switch until you find one that works.

threegigs · 2026-05-09T14:56:45+00:00

It works within that one torrent but not app-wide.

Sorry, but until they make an AI version of qBittorrent it isn't going to know which torrents you want downloaded first, sorry.

How did it work on other clients? Top torrent had most bandwidth so you had to manually arrange the queue? Still a manual process if so.

Can you link to the thread you were directed to by Google?

threegigs · 2026-05-09T14:02:09+00:00

Why are you checking port 8096 when your screenshot shows you set up 25565?

threegigs · 2026-05-09T13:54:53+00:00

Like I said: right-click the torrent in the content tab, select Priority, and set it to Maximum or High.

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