Confused About Handbrake Compression Sizes

[xclmr]

I have been ripping my Blu-ray's and DVD's for backup for a few days now. I'm totally new to ripping Blu-ray's and using Handbrake as well as MakeMKV. Right now I am using MakeMKV to rip the Blu-ray to my hard drive as an mkv file. Then I'm using Handbrake to compress it and convert it to an MP4 file.

I did a lot of reading over the past several days to try and determine what settings I want to use in Handbrake to compress my video rips. I am going for the highest quality I can get but I also have a pretty huge collection to back up so I don't want the files to be too large. Basically the point right before most people can actually notice a difference in quality is where I want them to be compressed down to. After reading a lot of information and seeing that basically everyone has their own opinion on what the best settings are for Handbrake I just decided to go with the "High Profile" preset and not changing any of the settings after clicking it. The settings seemed similar to what a lot of people suggested and I assumed High Profile would mean high quality as well.

The Blu-ray rips that are compressed with this setting look good on my computer screen but what really confuses me is the file size of the output file after Handbrake has run its course. For example I ripped the movie Benjamin Button and the original mkv file is 41.7GB. After running it through Handbrake in the High Profile setting it ends up as an MP4 that is only 3.86GB. I expected this file to be at least 10GB if not 20GB. I just don't understand how a 41.7GB movie can be compressed down to 3.86GB and still be considered high quality.

Is the High Profile preset a recommended way to rip all my DVD's and Blu-Ray's? Like I said I'm going for best video and audio quality but also trying to keep the process fairly simple. I want to compress the files somewhat to save space because I can't afford to have movies that are nearly 42GB.. I was expecting to have most Blu-Ray rips that are the size of Benjamin Button be about 10GB -20GB and I am happy with that size. I know I could set the file size target to be that size but I would rather have the size be determined by the quality rather than the other way around.

Can anyone explain to me why the file size changes so significantly and why Handbrake still considers 1/10 the original size high quality? Are there any important settings that I should change in this preset to get better quality? Also should I be using the same settings for both DVD and Blu-Ray Rips?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

[Deleted User 11865]

RF 20 (High Profile preset default) for a 1080p source is pretty high-quality (went for RF22 for my only Blu-Ray after encoding a short sample at several rate factors).

You can increase the file size by lowering the RF, but frankly unless you notice the difference when watching I wouldn't bother. Blu-rays use (sometimes absurldly) high bitrates and indeed for some sources, most people won't be able to tell the difference between 4 and 20 GB. Other sources will come out larger, and some will compress even better. Don't forget to enable Large file size just in case your MP4 encode exceeds 4 GB).

Also, part of the size difference can be explained by audio, as "HD" audio can have data rates of several megabits per second per track. With the High Profile preset you're reencoding one audio track to 160 Kbps AAC and passing through the AC3 core when available, which means only about 800 Kbps overall.

[creamyhorror]

15-20GB 1080p encodes of movies are oversized. Blu-ray encodes are, generally speaking, oversized.

Let CRF (Constant Quality) do the deciding for you.

[xclmr]

Thanks for the information. I mostly wanted to make sure that if I compress the files down that much they wouldn't look noticeably different when I played them on a better TV than my computer screen. So it sounds like I should keep using the High Profile setting but enable the Large File Size option. Does that mean if I don't enable this option the files will be forced to stay under 4GB?

One other issue I've been having is with Handbrake crashing after beginning to encode my Blu-ray rip of The Wizard of Oz. Encoding begins fine but after about 10 or so seconds Handbrake stops functioning and Windows closes the program. So far this is the only Blu-ray rip that has done this (out of about but I'm worried that it might happen randomly to other rips down the road. Has anyone else had this problem and have they found a solution?

[mkelley]

Yes, just to confirm what others say here, the High Preset (at 20) is going to be FINE for your blu-rays (you may want to lower it to 22 after some tests).

And it will vary widely, so don't get excited if sometimes the encode is much larger (The African Queen blu-ray turned out to be 17GB on that preset). What typically happens is the more grain there is in the movie the larger the encode, and most modern movies are so swept of grain (rightly or wrongly) that they compress very well indeed.

[Deleted User 11865]

Does that mean if I don't enable this option the files will be forced to stay under 4GB?

No, it means that any encodes that exceed 4 GB will be corrupted and unusable.