HandBrake

tja wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2020 7:49 pm The frame rate of the MKV file is exactly 25, as from the DVD.
But the frame rate of the M4V / MP4 from HandBrakeCLI is 24.964370, as seen by VLC.
This seems to be NTSC, not PAL.
So there seem to be a bug in the HQ preset?

Actually, the 24.964370 is appropriate for PAL; for NTSC, it would be 29.97 something. You aren't going to see 25.0 or 30.0 frame rates, because the clock base is non-integer.

Audio is, as you have seen, its own can of worms. I generally do a passthrough of AC3 and a conversion to AAC (in that order) for the audio track on a DVD. It gets far more complicated when Bluray enters the equation, but I still use AC3 and AAC as the first tracks for player compatibility. I think I mentioned I gave up on rules-based selections...

Woodstock wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2020 2:17 am

tja wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2020 7:49 pm The frame rate of the MKV file is exactly 25, as from the DVD.
But the frame rate of the M4V / MP4 from HandBrakeCLI is 24.964370, as seen by VLC.
This seems to be NTSC, not PAL.
So there seem to be a bug in the HQ preset?

Actually, the 24.964370 is appropriate for PAL; for NTSC, it would be 29.97 something. You aren't going to see 25.0 or 30.0 frame rates, because the clock base is non-integer.

That's only for 24000/1001 (3,753.75 ticks per frame on a 90 kHz timebase). 25fps is 3,600 ticks per frame; even 30000/1001 is 3,003 ticks per frame.

Woodstock wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2020 2:17 am

tja wrote: ↑Mon May 25, 2020 7:49 pm The frame rate of the MKV file is exactly 25, as from the DVD.
But the frame rate of the M4V / MP4 from HandBrakeCLI is 24.964370, as seen by VLC.
This seems to be NTSC, not PAL.
So there seem to be a bug in the HQ preset?

Actually, the 24.964370 is appropriate for PAL; for NTSC, it would be 29.97 something. You aren't going to see 25.0 or 30.0 frame rates, because the clock base is non-integer.

Audio is, as you have seen, its own can of worms. I generally do a passthrough of AC3 and a conversion to AAC (in that order) for the audio track on a DVD. It gets far more complicated when Bluray enters the equation, but I still use AC3 and AAC as the first tracks for player compatibility. I think I mentioned I gave up on rules-based selections...

Sorry for me being so intense.
I was pretty much frustrated, and still am.

BTW, PAL is EXACTLY 25 FPS!
And all my DVDs show exactly this speed.

This is, because Europe has a 50 Hz current.
Straight, right and easy.

All those more complicated numbers come from the strange US standards

https://www.borrowlenses.com/blog/intro ... ing-speeds

Woodstock wrote: ↑Tue May 26, 2020 2:17 am Audio is, as you have seen, its own can of worms. I generally do a passthrough of AC3 and a conversion to AAC (in that order) for the audio track on a DVD. It gets far more complicated when Bluray enters the equation, but I still use AC3 and AAC as the first tracks for player compatibility. I think I mentioned I gave up on rules-based selections...

I tried to render the first epsiode from M.A.S.H:

$ ls title_t00.mkv Woodstock.m4v MASH_YR1_D1_t00_VF22.m4v MASH_YR1_D1_t00_F22.m4v
-rwxrwx---+ 1 tja None 936149381 May 24 01:05 title_t00.mkv*
-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 tja None 441351270 Jun 6 15:00 Woodstock.m4v*
-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 tja None 380447566 Jun 6 15:23 MASH_YR1_D1_t00_VF22.m4v*
-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 tja None 410712755 Jun 6 15:35 MASH_YR1_D1_t00_F22.m4v*

As you can see, the original MKV file is about 936 MB, your command resulted in 441 MB and my tried with Very Fast and Fast, also at quality 22 were 380 and 410 MB ...

But this is only about 50% of the original PAL DVD version.

To be honest, i thought that the resulting files would be smaller.
And this is already the worst acceptable quality.

There are a lot of variables in how small you can make something. If the master of an episode was particularly "grainy" (they use that effect for the opening, but sometimes there's "noise" in the whole episode), using a noise filter can make a HUGE difference in file size. But it will remove some detail and take a lot longer.

I just pulled up a directory of MASH season 1 on my friend's NAS, and the files vary from 301MB to 531MB, all compressed with the same settings. I don't know what settings he used for the compression; probably just one of the normal handbrake presets. Episode 22 was just over 400MB.

I do know he said he was going to re-encode them because he forgot to include subtitle tracks the first time (he's deaf).