Optimal Settings For Ripping Older DVD to Modern State MP4

[mgrollman]

Please detail your question or problem in as much detail as possible:

This is more of a "how to approach / best practice question" from a new user, but I was not able to find a the answer in docs or forums, so here I let it rip with the community group. I did a test run and it shows in pastebin below, mostly to expose what the log shows about the source material than about the results of this particular run, which was without error.

I have end user created video content that began on svideo digital tape in the mid 90's, which was burned (not DRM issues here) to a DVD format around 2000, and now I wish to convert some or all of it for MP4 containers (or MKV, does not matter to me at this point) for small family distribution.

Basic Question: My instinct is just straight rip it with no trans-coding, to keep what quality is there intact for max quality into the future, but I cannot find settings that do this in Handbreak. Is there a preset of other way to take my content and just mux it unchanged over to MP4, without tweaking what appears to be (see log) MPEG2 source ("+ decoder: mpeg2video")? In short, how to get the stuff over to MP4 without degrading it worse than it already is?

Broader Question: Is my assumption on "avoiding transcoding this source" valid for maxing out quality, or would I be better served with moving his to one of your higher quality x.264 or similar codecs? Is its better to transcode the older source material, are there any rules of thing for how far to take it, or is this purely a "try them all and see what looks best" kind of artform?

What version of HandBrake? 1.07 64 bit. On Windows 10.

Code: Select all

 https://pastebin.com/fY66xs8G

[rollin_eng]

You have pretty much answered your own question, it's probably best to just rip your discs without converting them.

HB cannot do this as it always converts the video but try a program called makemkv, this should convert your DVD to mkv without loss.

You could then try converting some of the mkv's to mp4 in HB. This will probably reduce the size of them but will result in some, but sometimes unnoticeable depending on settings, quality loss.

[BradleyS]

If you do decide to re-encode with HandBrake, the (Super) HQ 480p30 Surround presets are probably what you’re looking for.

If your sources need some restoration, consider adding the NLMeans denoiser with Tape tune.

[mgrollman]

Good direction. Starting with a not too degraded DVD source sample, Makemkv was a simple way to get it containerized without transcoding steps, and the HandBrake (Super) HQ 480p30 Surround preset gave an MP4 roughly 30% larger than the input MKV, and with at least comparable quality to my eye. I'll try next one of the more degraded DVD's, and see what the NLMeans denoiser with Tape tune does for it. Thanks, guys!

[BradleyS]

You're welcome. Try the regular HQ preset too (non-Super). File size will come down a bit, and I imagine the quality will look about the same. NLMeans will also bring down file size, as a cleaner picture requires fewer bits to encode.