I think ideally I’d love to have some sort of automation for DASH content. However, the level of effort for a hobby is too much for me to bother with that at the moment. I did crack down on file sizes mostly because even though I’m not worried about bandwidth it does feel at times that I’m uploading way too many big files.

I spent hours tweaking a PowerShell script to process videos, testing CRF and reencoding through multiple passes to find the right balance between size and quality. I’m still unsure whether to fully commit to CRF or try a hybrid approach. Honestly, I know I’ll never completely understand ffmpeg—it has too many features and flags that just go over my head. Learning every option and codec setting seems like an overwhelming time sink.