It’s a poor analogy, but imagine a public IP like a hotel, there can be lots of guests (clients) at this hotel. Hotel policy is they won’t let any outsiders in unless you know the room number (port) of the person you’re trying to reach.

Imagine you and a friend are staying in separate hotels and want to give each other copies of your favorite Linux .ISOs, but neither of you knows the other’s room number - you show up at the hotel and the front desk tells you to pound sand because you don’t have their room number.

As long as one of you knows the other’s room number though, you can meet.

Torrenting without port forwarding means you can only trade your favorite .ISOs with people who have port forwarding enabled (sharing their room number to the tracker), which makes you less effective of a seeder. Enabling port forwarding allows you to share with anyone (sharing your room number with the tracker).

The elephant is the only animal with 4 knees.

for reasons I don’t completely understand, Resilio Sync connections seem to be quicker and more reliable

Resilio runs a “relay” server to facilitate connections where neither peer has properly set up port forwarding. Only downside of Resilio is its not open source, so you just kinda have to take their privacy policy at face value. As long as op isn’t sending something super sensitive though, it probably is no big deal.

Definitely no, viruses need 48-72 hours of incubation before the .mkv host becomes contagious. If the file is <24 hours old, I’d look for another source.

If you’re worried your computer might be infected, you should consider swapping your case LEDs with UV lights to purify your system.

Look, I definitely get it, but just a note, encoding 100+ 4k HEVC movies is going to take months of time at full PC loads. It’s a subtle cost, but depending on your electricity rate, running a 200W PC 24/7 for 3 months straight may hurt your bottom line more than it helps.

If you already have the storage, the cheapest option may be just to keep it. If you’re looking to increase the size of your collection it may be about even to save 6 TB via encode and to buy an extra 6TB disc, depending on your setup

You’re about to embark on a massive journey and I wish you the best of luck :D

Compressing 110 4K movies is going to be a long encode time, but it will be so nice to digitize that collection.

First question: if you already have them ripped and stored, do you even need to re-encode them? If you have a powerful enough Jellyfin server for transcoding, that may be enough.

That said, if you’re looking to optimize for space and quality, there’s some questions to ask:

• proprietary (but ubiquitous) HEVC or the emerging open standard AV1? It’s going to be a lot easier finding tips/guides for HEVC.

• Constant Rate Factor (CRF), or Average Bit Rate (ABR). CRF tends to be more straightforward if you have a varied collection of content because it let’s the encoder choose settings to deliver consistent quality. 2-pass average bit rate is good if you have a target size or compatibility in mind - great for squeezing out the absolute optimal quality if you’re trying to fit on a Blu-Ray disc or meet certain streaming criteria, but 2x the encode time (hence “2-pass”) can be a tough sell.

Stick with software encoding, steer clear of hardware solutions like NVENC. They’re crazy fast, but inconsistent quality.

There’s some guides out there on converting DV to HDR 10+ etc, but I don’t have a lot of experience with that process.

Which is accomplished by doing the described steps

I used to have a hard mousepad, because I thought it was “cool”, but in retrospect it was basically no different than just using my desk would have been. They’re noisy, and 99% of them just give off edgy gamer vibes.

Cheap neoprene (or similar) mousepads are all about the same in terms of performance, but pricier ones typically look better and may last a little bit longer.

Recently I’ve upgraded my setup to a wool one from here: https://grovemade.com/desk-and-mouse-pads/

Its been about a year and I still love it, but I will note that I can see how the slightly rougher texture could be a turnoff for some people. They do have other options with different natural materials you may be interested in. IMO, all of their options look classy AF, and I like the use of more natural materials

GPU encoders like NVENC run their own algorithms that are optimized for graphics cards. The output it compatible with x265, but the encoder is not identical and there are far fewer options to tweak to optimize your video.

The output is orders of magnitude faster but (in my experience) objectively worse, introducing lots of artifacts

There is a third option for you - as others have suggested, you can use a tool like Handbrake to extract the content from your DVDs, but from there, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can acquire a higher quality release from… Somewhere else… Get it in .mkv format, and you can use a tool like MKVToolNix to extract the audio from your DVD copy and “mux” it onto your HD copy.

MKV files are great because they are really just containers (like a fancy .zip), keeping the audio and video independent, allowing you to easily swap one out for the other.

The only downside is you may have to edit the audio slightly to sync up with your video