HandBrake

have you tried using the more recent developer snapshot? Apparently the Win GUI is buggy in that version, but it might solve the problem you're currently having.

Also, is this problem occurring on all encodes you try or is it just on this one dvd?

Is HandBrake locking up or is your entire computer locking up? If it's the entire computer, it could be a heat issue.

I second TedJ's recommendation for MediaInfo.

As for a replacement program, I think FFmpegX and the Mac port of mencoder are good candidates.

Well, that sounds good so far. Can you watch the movie in VLC (drag the VIDEO_TS folder onto the VLC icon)? If not, then the DVD probably uses an encryption mechanism that VLC cannot get around.

Have you tried using the newer developer snapshot? It may not fix your problem, but it's worth a shot.

After looking around a bit, it looks like 5.1 audio streamed to the 360 is a dicey endeavor altogether. The 360 only supports 2 channel audio in mp4 containers, regardless of audio codec, and it has no support for mkv containers without transcoding (unless something has changed fairly recently). The...

I believe your symptoms and log suggest that the movie is not being decrypted properly. Are you sure you've installed and used VLC properly?

This sounds to me like a decoding/transcoding issue happening at the point of streaming rather than an actual HandBrake problem. What kind of connection do you have from your playback devices to your stereo? Are you certain they're passing the full stream to your receiver, which is then doing the de...

CABAC greatly improves the quality of a file for a given bitrate at the cost of higher complexity (i.e., it takes more processing power to decode the resulting file) as compared with CAVLC. However, because of the increased complexity, not all devices support CABAC. Pyramidal B-frames are very simil...

HandBrake uses FFmpeg to decode, so whatever it can deal with, HB can deal with, IIRC.

That said, I can't think of any lossless video codecs that it works with, but I know it can passthru AC3 and DTS (in mkv containers using the latest developer snapshot only).

I see you're using 0.9.3. Have you tried using the more recent developer snapshot? There's a message about where to download it at the top of the forums.

Were you using 0.9.3? Does your original encoding have AAC audio? If so, there is a bug in the Windows build that causes it to always fail. You can try using the new developer snapshot instead, which might give you better results.

your advanced options look pretty decent to me. you might want to turn detelecine on, just in case (it won't kick in unless it's needed and it won't slow your encodes down unless it kicks in, so no real reason not to use it). One thing you might consider is using Constant Quality instead of 2-pass. ...

Ah, thanks for the info on where the rev number is hard-coded. I'll just manually write it in unless/until I can manage to include it automatically.

Hey John, those are my packages. Sorry for any confusion they caused. I try to make it clear that they're unsupported so people don't bring any issues here, but that's obviously not working :oops: I just updated the description on the ppa page to try and make it a little more clear. I'm not sure why...

If you started with an .mts and then ran it through handbrake to an .mp4 container, your format is now .mp4, not .mts.mp4, which isn't a real container. This in mind, to put it on a DVD that you could watch in a regular DVD player, you'll have to now convert the .mp4 to a DVD-compatible format (i.e....

The settings will not always be exactly consistent, but people often find a good setup or two that work for most things. All of the esoteric options can definitely be daunting at first, but the HandBrake wiki does a great job of explaining them. A couple of major things to keep in mind are: live act...

Well, one thing you could do is manually set the cropping. I know that's not ideal, but it's better than double-encoding.

You can maintain DVD-exact audio quality using passthru, either DTS (only available in mkv container using recent developer snapshot; not available in 0.9.3) or AC3 (m4v or mkv). With either of these options, the audio won't be reencoded, so there will be no quality loss. This is obviously the best ...

they must have done some serious optimizing to badaboom, then, because it looked like ass when I tried it.

Have you tried using the latest developer snapshot? They've really improved a lot of things since 0.9.3 was released, so they might have already fixed the issue.

Usually, the differences between presets are largely related to advanced x264 options, which can let you get higher quality with a lower bitrate/filesize. However, not all devices can work with all options, so a higher bitrate may be needed to achieve comparable quality on these devices than if the ...

Are there any advanced settings you like for the iPhone or Apple Universal preset? you shouldn't really modify the advanced settings from a preset if you plan on playing the files on a device, as they're pretty particular about what works and what doesn't (that's the reason the presets exist, after...

I know this is a common thing for people who use MythTV to record shows. You might have better luck asking those folks.

Is there any display/calculation of the relative end result file sizes when I insert a source DVD? Although Constant Quality is by far the preferred method of choosing bitrate/quality, you can use 'Bitrate (kbps)' or 'Target Size (MB)' if the output size is your biggest concern rather than quality....