HandBrake

Action and camera movement has a very significant effect. With the same settings an encode of Project X is about 4x the bitrate of The Social Network because the later has largely static scenes and little character movement. No grain or noise to be found in either. I should have been more clear. Wh...

I just want to clarify something. When it comes to encoded file size, the amount of action, explosions, etc in a movie has almost no effect. I say "almost" because it can have a very small effect, but that certainly isn't the reason why the Indiana Jones movies result in file sizes so much...

To echo what the others have already told you... for DVDs, you want to start with RF 20. Encode the movie that way, or just encode one chapter, and then check results. Adjust by 0.5 or 1.0 as necessary... if RF 20 isn't doing it for you, try RF 19.5 or 19. With Blu-ray sources, start at RF 21 or 22 ...

10.5.8 is Leopard, not Snow Leopard. The latest versions (including the nightlies) still support Snow Leopard. I'm not sure what the last version of HandBrake to support Leopard was, but you can find 0.9.5 and 0.9.6 here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/handbrake/files/ Give them a try and report ba...

Whoops, double post.

HandBrake is designed to use all available CPU resources in a non-intrusive way. In my experience, it has not negatively impacted any other tasks I was doing on my computer at the time. If the CPU cycles are available, it uses them -- but foreground processes get priority. The fans are going to spin...

All MakeMKV versions are "beta." You're using the most current, correct version.

Try ripping the DVD in your other optical drive and see if you get the same error.

Dave

Smithcraft wrote:First Warner DVD looks pretty bad! http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompar ... herain.htm

That explains it. I have (or had) the second Warner DVD release, which was quite improved over the first one. The Blu-ray is better still.

Dave

First: "HandBrake" not "Handbreak".

Try ripping with MakeMKV first. It should let you select the main feature without too much difficulty.

Dave

musicvid -- I'm not sure if there was more than one DVD edition of Singin' in the Rain, but I don't recall my old DVD looking anywhere near as bad as you're describing. If I can find it later I'll take a look, but it may be in a box in storage now that I have the blu-ray, or I may have given it away...

I just checked again, and it still does it. I can provide a log if you'd like, but Rodeo confirmed as well... so the log seems unnecessary. I will provide one if it helps, but you don't actually have to do an encode to see this. It tells you right in the GUI that it's going to do it.

Dave

Does it every time I encode 4:3 material from Blu-ray. Though now I'm in the habit of fixing it (in picture settings) prior to the encode.

I'll check to see if it still behaves this way in the latest nightly and post back if it does.

Dave

By the way, special effects (or a lack thereof) have little effect on file sizes. In fact, since most modern special effects (such as those in Iron Man) are digitally created, they lack natural film grain and might be expected to encode more efficiently than stuff shot on actual film.

Dave

Another factor: You are probably not encoding Singin' in the Rain correctly. By that I mean that you are actually upscaling it, due to the default way HandBrake encodes movies that have a taller aspect ratio than 16:9. Singin' in the Rain, properly encoded, would be 1440x1080, with unencoded black b...

Frontman, what devices are you watching the encoded movies on? The Universal preset may not be the best choice, depending on your preferred output hardware.

Dave

One other comment about DRC -- it only works when the source audio is AC3 and you are encoding to another format. It doesn't work with AC3 pass-through or when the source is DTS.

For info about DRC (Dynamic Range Compression), see: https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/DynRangeCompression.

Dave

DRC can help, of course, but it isn't as good as the Audyssey processing I mentioned previously. It's also worth repeating that the wide dynamic range described is present in the original soundtracks on DVD and Blu-ray; HandBrake isn't causing it to happen. Edit: I've also been resistant to using DR...

This behavior has nothing to do with HandBrake. It is present in the original DVD as well. The problem is that many blockbuster-style movies want audiences to be blown away by the special effects and action sequences... but they want dialog, especially during quieter scenes, to be realistic. So you ...

Rodeo, After some additional testing, I have some additional info. What I found is that something in my advanced options string is triggering the behavior, though I don't know what. For example: Advanced options string - b-adapt=2:rc-lookahead=60:qpmin=0 This works. A new user preset including that ...

Using the Mac GUI version, this behavior is seen in all recent nightly builds. I don't know how far back one would have to go to find a version that doesn't behave this way. I do know that HandBrake didn't always have this problem (see below). I am trying to make a new user preset. I configure audio...

DaveQ: I checked the High Profile and it may seem OK but it applies only to MP4 encoding. I use MKV and there High Profile is not applicable. The High Profile preset automatically selects MP4 as the output container, but you can use the High Profile settings and then select MKV as your output conta...

Regarding the RF quality setting... I've been using RF 21 for almost all of my BR 1080p rips lately and they look fantastic. I don't know why you aren't seeing good quality with that setting. I would suggest starting with the High Profile preset and adjusting from there. For the majority of my rips ...

Forgot to address this: One things is for sure though: H.264 (and especially x264-encoded H.264) crushes MPEG-2. Understood, and agreed... but again my goal here is mostly so I can send home videos to my elderly relatives who have only a DVD player. I use HandBrake all the time to produce H.264 outp...

Rodeo, thank you for testing this and your detailed reply. I have been playing with these options for a couple days now, and can get VOB files with acceptable quality and much shorter encoding times than Toast delivers. (Really, it's hard to come up with settings that are as slow as Toast is.) Toast...

I forgot to address this: Dave, you're unlikely to find any documentation for creating DVD compliant MPEG2 streams with Handbrake because it was added to the nightly builds after the 0.9.5 release. As such, there is no documentation for this feature at all. Ah, that makes sense. I've been using the ...