HandBrake

Need the info from the activity log for that. Thus the bold underlined red text on a pink background at the top of the page.

Use Intel QuickSync if you've got it; not as efficient as the software encoders but way lower power usage.

The selection of output container has nothing to do with solving your subtitle problem. You can put text subs in MP4, but you have to choose the text encoding correctly for any container.

HB doesn't rip DVDs. Use MakeMKV.

It's relatively straightforward to scale ARM out to 32-64 cores (see Graviton, etc), and I expect Apple will do just that for the Mac Pro.

But anything that is vector-heavy and not recompiled or re-written (for asm) is going to be rough via SIMD-free translation.

Performance (with x264/x265) or efficiency (with T2) is going to be garbage on the ARM based Macs. While I agree with you I assume the ARM based Macs will start on their laptop ranges. But if they cant get close to Intel in x264/265 and other CPU intensive tasks they will basically have to kill the...

Performance (with x264/x265) or efficiency (with T2) is going to be garbage on the ARM based Macs.

Before you picked an RF that was widely considered too low for 1080p, now you're using a preset with an RF set much higher for 4K... no surprise you're getting very different results.

Also
6. Apply an appropriate video encoder tune.

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Are there any thoughts on when/if Handbrake will properly implement handling 4K UHD mkv files? My logs and such have been sitting seemingly untouched for about 6 weeks now. Have you submitted a patch for review on github? The main developers are all volunteers, and may not be working on your prefer...

is is possible to get that perforamnce bump with a single encode? Or is x265 encoding really just limited to not fully using all 24 threads? And before you snipe back (as I know you're going to do), the fact that there is 12% more performance left on the table with 2 encodes proves that the CPU isn...

The lightest preset that achieves the effect you desire, with a tune appropriate for your content.

No, it's not safe in that sense like decomb is. It will denoise all sources you apply it to.

Note the bitrates differ by ~5%.

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Can't really be sure what you did without it. Nothing you mentioned is an actual quality setting.

With respect, I'm not interested in debating the merits of hyperthreading, I understand what it is, I understand its not "double" the performance. However it can absolutely provide a meaningful performance increase over a non hyperthreaded CPU, and the difference is often a lot more than 10% as you...

That's a lot of nonsense to avoid choosing the appropriate tune.

Why not use the stillimage tune instead of the long pile of crap you have?

Rip with a DVD ripping app, like MakeMKV.

HB will preserve neither the HDR nor the 10-bit.

HB is a 8-bit SDR app living in a 10-bit HDR world.

Variable framerate, for one

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Absolutely; if you're measuring something for SSIM or PSNR without tuning for SSIM or PSNR, the whole experiment is invalid.