Want faster transcoding, don't care about file size

[whysoserious]

Hello,

My situation:

I want to transcode certain blu rays with "forced" subtitles (Avatar, Star Wars, etc.) that contain "alien speak". I've figured out how to rip them using MakeMKV and get the subtitle track I want. I've figured out how to get Handbrake to burn the subtitles in as it transcodes the original MKV file. It is necessary for me to transcode them with burned in subs in order to get the subs to display on my TV. I use Plex Media Server and the Plex client app on my Samsung TV to play the files.

What I want to do now is transcode them with high quality in the least amount of time, without regard to the resulting file size. In other words, I don't care if the end result is as big as the original, I just want it to take less time.

I currently use the High Profile default settings, with Framerate set to "Same as source" and RF set to 18. Audio is usually DTS-HD set to "passthrough". The resulting files look great and end up about half the size of the original, but it takes 4-8 hours on my Q6700 2.66 GHz quad core 8 Gig of ram PC.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received

[Rodeo]

The Normal preset is HandBrake's fastest full-resolution preset. You could also move the x264 preset slider to 'superfast' (I don't recommend ultrafast).

[whysoserious]

Thank you, Rodeo!

Just to be clear (I'm prone to derping), you're saying the Normal preset will result in a file of the same quality as High (all else being equal I suppose), but finish faster? The tradeoff being a larger file size as a result?

And moving the x264 preset slider to "superfast" will speedup the process, again keeping the quality high, but probably resulting in a larger file size?

Sorry to be dense, and thank you for your patience!

[Rodeo]

Not necessarily. But this would be easily remedied by adjusting the constant quality value (RF slider). Basically, pick the settings that give you the speed you want, and only then adjust the RF to match the quality you require.

[whysoserious]

Ok, thanks. I'll experiment a bit and see how it comes out.

Thx again...

[Devore]

You might be trying to solve the wrong problem... PLEX clients can play regular subtitles just fine, no need to burn them in.

Either way, there is some speed to be gained by sacrificing file size, but generally a faster encode comes at the cost of lower quality, regardless of file size.

[whysoserious]

Devore,

True, regular subtitles (.srt, etc.) play fine in Plex, but the pgs types in blu rays are difficult. The Samsung Plex client won't play them without transcoding on-the-fly. That might be fixed in a future release (maybe).

I may have found another solution though. I can convert the pgs subtitles to .srt with http://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit/ and Plex seems happy with those.

Thx to all for the suggestions!

[Devore]

Oh yes, by "normal subtitles" I meant SRT.

SubtitleEdit is spiffy, but I find it has massive issues with OCR on italics, which most subtitles have copious amounts of. For regular text it works perfectly, and the correcting features take care of minor problems.

You may also want to take a look at DVDSubExtractor (http://subextractor.codeplex.com/). It is bitmap based, not true OCR, so you will have to train it a bit the first few times you run it, but I find it very reliable, the only issues are with spacing sometimes, and that can be fixed with the spacing adjustment feature. DVDSubExtractor is not good for those subtitles that don't use a regular font, such as City of Lost Children DVD (off the top of my head), because nearly each letter is unique, but very few DVD titles fall into this category, and almost none on Blu Ray.

[magao]

You might want to look at BDSup2Sub - you'll lose some quality in the subtitles, but it'll probably take the least amount of time to get something that your TV can play back without transcoding.