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I'm backing up my bluray collection using makemkv, handbrake, and mkvmerge.
I've encoded a 22 GB mkv from makemkv using the High Profile setting with the following changes:
20% constant quality
deinterlace, decomb off
reference frames = 4
The encoded file is 7.62 GB.
My questions are: How much quality would I be loosing by upping the constant quality to 21 or 22? Would it be noticeable on a 60" 1080p?
Drive space is cheap, I just don't want to waste space if the quality wouldn't be noticeably different.
That is entirely up to you... quality is subjective after all. Try a single chapter encode at very RF rates and see what's acceptable to your eyes. Personally, I rarely go lower than RF 23 for 1080p encodes.
From my reading in the forum, it seems most people use 22 for BRs (just like most use 19 for DVDs). You could also up your b-frames to 4 for film and 6 for animated features, it will cost you a little on the encode time, but should help maintain quality when the picture is in motion.
I have quite an extensive ripped collection, and I generally fluctuate (depending on the movie) between 20-23. Most movies are 22, animations are 20 or 21. Talking movies (depending on lighting, grain, etc) are usually 23, sometimes 24. Really what percentage you use is dependent on the source and movie. Generally I use CQ of 22, give or take and end up with movies between 3-4 gig. Of course, there are a few strays that are 5, but that is rare. (relatively, 2gb per hour) There are some real odd balls like avatar that will require come out 9gig, opposed to 5 or 6 but that depending on lighting, camera used, cgi, etc. Now for viewing, I am very happy with my 4gig files as they look exactly like the 20-30-40gig source regardless of screen size and resolution. I have a few monitors and test movies a few minutes in. On the smaller screens at close viewing(cheaper tvs with lower-end filters or monitor lcds without filters) you will notice more flaws the higher the CQ, which is why I prefer to use a 21-24 CQ to preserve detail at cost of a little more size. I used to use a Cq of 24 to 28 (1 to 2 gig movies) and they don't look bad on cheap screens even at close viewing, and of course, on a higher end TV such as a modern samsung 55in with higher-end filters the CF24-28 movies look as if they have no lost details. But as I said, i prefer the 20-23 CQ so I don't have to re-rip my collection in the future (hopefully).
As for messing with the settings, i don't mess with B-frames or ref frames. They stay at 3, I do optimize in other areas though to maintain quality and size. The reason for that is playback and power. I like to be able to playback my files from any machine. And also, my media center connected to the TV is on 24/7 so I like the idea of having a lower-end machine. having higher ref frames, etc kind hurts playback slightly. Plus, I don't like the extra encoding time, nor have a seen a significant difference in size and detail, if any at all. But I encode in bulk so it's very situational for everyone.
Now as i said, the size of the file is really dependent on the source's lighting, cgi, camera used, grain, etc (as well as bandwidth spikes to prevent ripping and re-encoding implemented by the studio). Going from 20 to 21 or 22 you will see no difference in quality, and surely appreciate (if applicable) the extra space, as I would. the 8 gig movie you did at 20Cq can look the same as a 22CQ @ 5gig. Of course, the more and more your eyes "evolve" (once you see it you can't unsee it), you might not be happy with a CF of 22 (i can't really imagine that coming around), which is why I went from 1 to 2gig movies to a 3-6gig movie collection. Can't wait for bigger capacity drives, wouldn't have to bother re-encoding.
I always just use the High Profile preset (but change output to MKV and passthrough either AC3 or DTS).
RF 20 is probably overkill for some films, but I can definitely notice the difference between it and lower quality on animated films or any that are heavily processed (i.e. nearly any modern video nowadays, as they want to remove all the grain). Older films (such as The African Queen) which have tons of grain probably can be processed at a lower quality setting without much notice, but as you said, disk space is cheap and it's just as easy to set it once and not worry about it.
I've started doing Bluray encodes and before I go through my whole library I want to have the ideal settings figured out...does anybody notice a difference going up to RF 19? Or is it basically impossible to ever notice a difference between that and say 21 or 22? How did people determine that 21-23 was the optimal range, is it a technical calculation or subjective trial and error? And why does standard/lower definition content need a BETTER rf, shouldn't it be the other way around since a 1080p bluray film is going to have a lot more detail?
The recommended RF range of 23-21 is a rule of thumb determined by much testing... but it is purely a subjective evaluation. As to why you need a lower RF for SD material, there are two good reasons... a Blu-ray encode is a cleaner source, and the resulting encode is subject to less scaling during playback.
For a while I used 22 but I switched to 20 for three reasons:
1) I noticed on *some* material a definite difference, even on my 55" TV (I also have a 9' screen). In particular, animated material was noticeably lacking in some fine details until I went to 20.
2) Since I was using 20 for all my DVD stuff, it was just a lot easier to stick to one preset rather than to have to remember to switch back and forth.
3) The savings from the lower quality was about 20% but given that disk space is so cheap that didn't seem worth the loss of quality.
As Ted says, it's subjective so make your own tests to determine what you like. But I would pick a range of materials for testing, as the source really makes a difference (in particular if you like animation I'd try one of the newer animation films).
I see, good to know. Have you tried going to RF 18 and if so noticed a similar level of difference as you did going from 22 to 20? Also, how come animation needs better RF since shouldn't it be "cleaner" than regular film?
I did make one test at 18 and couldn't discern any differences -- not as exhaustive a test as I did with 22/20 (in which I had encoded about 10 different sources) but enough to convince me I would not see any more improvement.
It's only "cleaner" in terms of grain or overall noise. Animation (modern animation) is much more detailed because it originates totally digitally (they can engineer as much detail as the output can handle). And when I say "animation" I include in that digital FX (essentially one and the same thing nowadays). But you already know this -- I'm sure when you want to impress your friends with your HD set you put on, say, "Toy Story 3", or "Avatar", right? You don't put on some rom-com or drama like "The Social Network" (which, despite having a terrific blu-ray image and sound, ain't nearly as detailed).
Ok maybe I will go with 19.5 as my default Sounds like you have a lot of experience with animated content, I'm curious if you have a different set of settings for animation or keep it the same because RF20 is good enough?
No, my default is used for everything, including DVD sources.
The one and only change I make is to turn off the decomb and detelecine filters (from "Default") when I'm not doing "TV" sources (I don't want to lose even a tiny bit of encoding speed when doing the majority of my sources, which don't need either one).
Newbie question here - I'm also in the process of backing up my bluray collection as well. I'm using DVDFab to rip the Bluray and Handbrake to encode to MKV. I've just been using the high profile setting with the only changes being to change to MKV container and setting the audio tracks to AC3 Passthrough. The first few Bluray's i've attempted to back up have all worked but the file sizes are only around 3gb each. Is it normal for them to be that small? I assumed they would be closer to 8-10gb's? Am I doing something wrong? The ripped mts files were around 18-19gb for each of the Blurays I've attempted to encode so far (Monsters vs Aliens, Kung Fu Panda, and American Psycho (main movies only))
Most animated movies (like the first two you mentioned) compress very far down (just looking at some recent encodes I note that Megamind and How to Train Your Dragon were both about 3GB).
Non-animated sources will vary widely -- older, grainy films can end up huge (12GB or more). It's hard to generalize, but I average around 7GB for non-animated movies. It really depends on how much digital cleanup is applied, how much change there is in the image (action films tend to be larger) and how the source originated (more and more movies are coming direct from digital sources, rather than film). However, it would be a rare non-animated film that was less than 4GB (I don't have American Psycho so I can't tell you anything about it), although I do note that The Social Network compressed down to less than 3GB (very clean source and not much action -- just folks sitting around and talking :>)
I recently got a Blu-Ray drive and started encoding BDs. I find that:
With the resolution and bitrate available, a well encoded Blu-Ray source can have a lot of nice, fine grain
I like that, and I want to retain as much grain as possible from the source
x264's default setting do a decent job of preserving grain, but it could be better
I've been using part of x264's grain tune:
(requires trellis > 0 and subme >= 6, though I feel it works better with higher subme values)
I find that it improves grain retention significantly and boosts the general quality a fair bit too*;
it's also close enough to the film tune to be useable for most sources, even reasonably clean ones
After finding the settings that I liked (basically, x264 --preset slower with my tune), I tested several rate factors at 1080p:
RF 22: even with my grain-friendly tune, I found a sizeable difference between 21 and 22
(grain retention is noticeably worse, and the image isn't quite as detailed and sharp)
RF 21: much better (especially grain, but general quality too)
RF 19: a big improvement too; while RF 21 is excellent, RF 19 is near perfect (pretty much lossless)
I can hardly tell the difference between RF 21 and 19 when I'm more than 3 feet away from my display (27" iMac, 2560x1440)
I finally settled for RF 19; while RF 21 is nearly as good at a fraction of the size (~1.5x smaller for most BDs) I have few Blu-Rays and decided it was a good idea to err on the side of quality/overkill, especially since I may be upgrading to a WDTV Live and a 42" display later this year.
So far my encodes have resulted in file sizes between 7 and 10 GB (with video bitrates between 8 and 12 Mbps).
*IMO, aside from improving grain retention, --psy-rd 1.0,0.25 improves quality by sometimes as much as one RF point, even for DVDs and other sources; ................................i.e. --crf 21 --psy-rd 1.0,0.25 can be the equivalent of --crf 20 --psy-rd 1.0,0.00
That's what I've been using, and I think IT'S near perfect, even on my 9' screen. I have actually run A/B tests with an encode and the blu-ray disc and neither I nor any of the folks who have participated in my experiments (around 12) could tell which was which (so I assume that means it's as Good as it Gets :>).
I use WDTV Lives and my smallest display is 55". BTW, one thing you should be aware of is the Live units will not wirelessly play high bitrate files. If you are going to have a wired network (or a locally attached drive) there will be no issues, but for wireless you are far better off encoding smaller (at least for the movies with the most grain -- "Black Hawk Down", for example, never worked for me until I wired up the network).
Yes, I tried RF 20. I was unable to see a difference with RF 21 when playing (but I was able to see the difference with RF 19 in some "difficult" sequences).
The WDTV is directly connected to hard drives or fast USB keys and I use vbv.
First off, I am new to Handbrake, and new to BD encoding, however in some form or fashion I've been backing up DVD's for approx. 10 years.
Anyway, very good reading in this thread! Lots of opinions, ideas, and preferences.
Finally, I've been using Handbrake for roughly 2 months (Wonderful software), having ZERO issues with DVD backup. Recently within the last week I broke down and bought a Bluray drive and encoded a handful of Bluray movies. I left all settings at default, including a RF of 20, which created large files in the 3 - 5 GB range. Perfect. However, I went to backup and add my Transformers 1 movie to my media center and the output file was 11.4 GB! Windows wouldn't even play the file, I didn't bother trying to move it to the media center.
Someone mentioned special effects & cgi as being the reason for larger file sizes, is such the case here? Raising the RF from 20 to say, 22 or 23, will that truly shrink the file size considerably without the loss of quality? I started to think I had done something wrong though I did not change any settings from previous encodes, simply clicked the source button, navigated to the source, then hit start. Looking for any advice or opinions, thanks guys (and gals if applicable!).
Larcen wrote:Raising the RF from 20 to say, 22 or 23, will that truly shrink the file size considerably without the loss of quality?
Of course it will lower the quality, the question is whether the perceptible quality is sufficient to meet your needs. The RF scale is (AFAIK) logarithmic, so you'll get pretty good file size decreases when you go up a full step or two.
Run a few test encodes of a chapter and see what it looks like. Grainy, shaky, or otherwise difficult to encode sources will result in larger file sizes.
Actually, I think the bigger problem is why your machine wouldn't play that file. 11gb ain't that big a file ("The African Queen" encode came to around 17gb, mostly due to it being a very grainy and less digitized production). VLC should play that file without any issues on even a fairly slow PC.
My largest file, I think, was "Black Hawk Down". At 17gb my WD Live plays it fine streamed across my network from my NAS, but only wired. Wirelessly it has issues (which led me to wire up the entire house, so that all four of my Live units can play any movie from the NAS, even simultaneously). But I think you're far better off finding an RF factor you like and sticking with it (and fixing any issues with your playback) then trying to adjust things for each and every movie you encode. Just IMHO.
Thanks for the quick replies. As for my computer, its brand new, literally. Specs are as follows:
Asus P6X58D Premium
6GB Corsair 3Channel
Intel i7 950
Corsair H70 Water Cooler
WD 7200 RPM SATAII 750GB HDD
So, I don't believe horsepower is my problem. And if it is, perhaps its a software issue on my part? WMP nor VLC would play the file, they report 0 errors, just wouldn't play them. I guess I could have tried moving the file to my MythTV Backend and streaming it out to the front ends, but since it wouldn't play on my encoding pc, didn't bother.
I have plenty of storage, 2TB external drives, but isn't 17gb overkill? Maybe not, this is my first venture into backing up my BD movies to media center so excuse my (possible?) stupid question(s?). I'll try turning the RF up to 21, 22, and 23 on a few various chapters to compare quality then run a full encode afterwards to see if end up with another 10gb+ file.
100% correct. If you are encoding to MP4 (the container, not the codec) rather than MKV then you'll need to select "large file support" if the file is likely to exceed 4 GB in size, otherwise the encode will fail.
Sounds like you have a lot of experience with animated content, I'm curious if you have a different set of settings for animation or keep it the same because RF20 is good enough?