I've tried setting up a TV series according to the guideline in your sig. for such using HB 8.5b1 using except that my show is 320x176 instead of 320x240 as in your example and I realize your guideline is written for the previous MediaFork, however I've never been able to get this to work on any version back to HB 7.0.
I'm wondering are you able to get a video bitrate of 1450? My files always top out at 1100kbps to 1150kbps.
I find Supernatural is a troublesome TV series to rip as it has so many dark scenes... even going from 1000kbps to the 1100kbps or so it'll give me at the small res. of 320x176 seems to return the best quality on the iPod. I'd like to give closer to the 1500kbps limit a try but can't get HB to go there.
I also find H.264 to be the best option.
Baggss... re: your guideline for iPod...
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Thanks Baggss for checking that out for me... 
Just as a curiosity more than anything else I'm going to post the results of what iTunes tells me regarding Season 1 of Supernatural that I ripped with HB 8.5b1:
Video bitrate: 1200 kbps
Audio bitrate 128 kbps
The figures from iTunes are Total bitrate (video + audio) and all the files came out at 127 kbps audio so you can see which ones gave me the 1200 kbps video I wanted and which wouldn't:
Pilot - 1254
Wendigo - 1328
Dead In The Water - 1328
Phantom Traveler - 1327
Bloody Mary - 1270
Skin - 1327
Hook Man - 1327
Bugs - 1327
Home - 1328
Asylum - 1270
Scarecrow - 1327
Faith - 1327
Route 666 - 1325
Nightmare - 1325
The Benders - 1327
Shadow - 1328
Hell House - 1327
Something Wicked - 1327
Provenance - 1327
Dead Man's Blood - 1086
Salvation - 1328
Devil's Trap - 1327
I also tried going higher on a couple... Route 666 which was borderline and Shadow, I raised the Video bitrate to 1400:
Route 666 - 1326
Shadow - 1339
As you can see it wouldn't go there.
Curious thing is that if I rip any of those files in HB as XviD's and then use iSquint or VisualHub to get a higher Video bitrate they won't copy to my iPod stating that they can't be play on it?
I've noticed other people on the VH forums saying higher bitrate files not copying to their iPods... so maybe Handbrake is more savvy somehow?
Anyway, the results look good on the iPod so I'll leave it as is.
Just as a curiosity more than anything else I'm going to post the results of what iTunes tells me regarding Season 1 of Supernatural that I ripped with HB 8.5b1:
Video bitrate: 1200 kbps
Audio bitrate 128 kbps
The figures from iTunes are Total bitrate (video + audio) and all the files came out at 127 kbps audio so you can see which ones gave me the 1200 kbps video I wanted and which wouldn't:
Pilot - 1254
Wendigo - 1328
Dead In The Water - 1328
Phantom Traveler - 1327
Bloody Mary - 1270
Skin - 1327
Hook Man - 1327
Bugs - 1327
Home - 1328
Asylum - 1270
Scarecrow - 1327
Faith - 1327
Route 666 - 1325
Nightmare - 1325
The Benders - 1327
Shadow - 1328
Hell House - 1327
Something Wicked - 1327
Provenance - 1327
Dead Man's Blood - 1086
Salvation - 1328
Devil's Trap - 1327
I also tried going higher on a couple... Route 666 which was borderline and Shadow, I raised the Video bitrate to 1400:
Route 666 - 1326
Shadow - 1339
As you can see it wouldn't go there.
Curious thing is that if I rip any of those files in HB as XviD's and then use iSquint or VisualHub to get a higher Video bitrate they won't copy to my iPod stating that they can't be play on it?
I've noticed other people on the VH forums saying higher bitrate files not copying to their iPods... so maybe Handbrake is more savvy somehow?
Anyway, the results look good on the iPod so I'll leave it as is.
When I encode for iPod and I want the bitrate to go all the way up to 1500 I use CRF (in prefs) constant quality 74% and set my x264 Options to
This puts a ceiling on the bitrate. There is a downside to this… if a certain scene wants much much more than 1500, an artifact can occur (actually, I haven't seen it myself). BTW, this is at 640, not 320, so it could vary. My bitrates end up at 1479, 1498, 1502, etc.,
Code: Select all
vbv-maxrate=1500:vbv-bufsize=1:cabac=0:deblock=0:ref=1:qpmin=16:ratetol=1.0
:subme=5:me=hex:me-range=12:level=30Thanks, I'll make note of that.
I haven't had a problem getting bitrates to go higher on resolutions over 320 so far although at least up to 1300 kbps... it's the 320x176 ones that give me fits.
The reason for me wanting the lower resolution and higher bitrate on some DVD's is because I've been trying to get the best result I can on some TV series such as Supernatural, Star Trek Enterprise, Dark Angel that tend to be very hard to get a happy medium. I've tried a higher res. and higher bitrate but end up with a file that looks like a bad .jpg or .gif on the iPod... blocky and awful gradients. They look better if I shoot for the standard 320x176 and high video bitrate.
What is the difference between CRF and CQP?
I haven't had a problem getting bitrates to go higher on resolutions over 320 so far although at least up to 1300 kbps... it's the 320x176 ones that give me fits.
The reason for me wanting the lower resolution and higher bitrate on some DVD's is because I've been trying to get the best result I can on some TV series such as Supernatural, Star Trek Enterprise, Dark Angel that tend to be very hard to get a happy medium. I've tried a higher res. and higher bitrate but end up with a file that looks like a bad .jpg or .gif on the iPod... blocky and awful gradients. They look better if I shoot for the standard 320x176 and high video bitrate.
What is the difference between CRF and CQP?
Cool... thanks!
Just for hoots I'm going to try your settings on that lowest file above:
Dead Man's Blood - 1086
I think where VisualHub is concerned it may be an issue with the qpmin setting? You use qpmin=16... VH just calls it qmin? I've noticed in the logs for converted files it doesn't go higher than 8 most of the time with short spikes up to 13. If one sets the file on "Go Nuts" you get from the looks of things a final rate factor of about 7.98... 9.08 if I had it set on "Standard".
I don't completely understand those logs but that doesn't sound right for iPod compatibility...
Just for hoots I'm going to try your settings on that lowest file above:
Dead Man's Blood - 1086
I think where VisualHub is concerned it may be an issue with the qpmin setting? You use qpmin=16... VH just calls it qmin? I've noticed in the logs for converted files it doesn't go higher than 8 most of the time with short spikes up to 13. If one sets the file on "Go Nuts" you get from the looks of things a final rate factor of about 7.98... 9.08 if I had it set on "Standard".
I don't completely understand those logs but that doesn't sound right for iPod compatibility...
OK... well thus far I have had no luck get a standard 320x176 size TV series intended for iPod viewing to go as high as 1400kbps for a video bitrate. They will encode at that rate in VisualHub however when adding them to iTunes and then trying to get them onto the iPod they are rejected as unplayable.
So, I was ready to throw in the towel and accept a video bitrate of between 1000kbps - 1200kbps until I recieved a movie trailer someone encoded in Videora at just over 1457kbps total... 320x132... video bitrate of 1329kbps. It played on my iPod, looked great, no sqawking, nothing. I've never gotten one to go that high.
Question is I don't don't know if I'm missing something as I've tried setting it up according to Baggss's excellent guide which is easy to follow or if this is a bug?... my iPod?...
Me?... HB 8.5b1 won't even encode 'em that high for me.
So, I was ready to throw in the towel and accept a video bitrate of between 1000kbps - 1200kbps until I recieved a movie trailer someone encoded in Videora at just over 1457kbps total... 320x132... video bitrate of 1329kbps. It played on my iPod, looked great, no sqawking, nothing. I've never gotten one to go that high.
Question is I don't don't know if I'm missing something as I've tried setting it up according to Baggss's excellent guide which is easy to follow or if this is a bug?... my iPod?...
Me?... HB 8.5b1 won't even encode 'em that high for me.Yeah... it's the resolution, I can get 1500kbps on 640xh as well, it's the 320xh... I imagine they must hit a limit. However I did fine something that improves things greatly!
I wasn't used any of the built in presets, rather I just set up my own personal one... so I got curious and went hunting for them to see if I could SEE what was different maybe, opened the UserPresets.plist in TextEdit and had a look at the HB-iPod one and found that at the end there is a string of "stuff" that I don't understand, but obviously it matters. It wasn't at the bottom of my custom preset. So I made a backup of the file in case I messed up, made sure HB 8.5b1 was shut down after I deleted my custom preset and just made the slight alterations to a few strings and integers I wanted to the HB-iPod preset... just things like framerate, turned off chapter markers, audio bitrate and 2-pass encoding.
These are the results of ripping Supernatural Season 1 and The 4400 Seasons 1 and 2. Both ripped to disk, full extraction with MTR 2.66 first.
Video bitrate 1500 kbps
Audio bitrate 128 kbps
Stats are from iTunes which as usual lists all audio as 127 kbps:
Supernatural S1
Pilot - 1314
Wendigo - 1572
Dead In The Water - 1628
Phantom Traveler - 1628
Bloody Mary - 1335
Skin - 1485
Hook Man - 1595
Bugs - 1628
Home - 1393
Asylum - 1329
Scarecrow - 1621
Faith - 1610
Route 666 - 1395
Nightmare - 1389
The Benders - 1416
Shadow - 1393
Hell House - 1477
Something Wicked - 1548
Provenance - 1545
Dead Man's Blood - 1143
Salvation - 1402
Devil's Trap - 1436
The 4400 S1&2
The Return - 1617
The New & Improved Carl Morrissey - 1626
Becoming - 1625
Trial By Fire - 1627
White Light - 1554
Wake Up Call - 1627
Voices Carry - 1597
Weight Of The World -1627
Suffer The Children - 1596
As Fate Would Have It - 1610
Life Interrupted - 1365
Carrier - 1609
Rebirth - 1489
Hidden - 1495
Lockdown - 1626
The Fifth Page - 1627
Mommy's Bosses - 1627
Everything loaded to my iPod, no problem... as you can see The 4400 was a smashing success, Supernatural an improvement.
What else I noticed is that the encoding time took a bit longer... but wot's longer to me at this point? I'm using a brand new MacBook Pro 2.33GHz versus my PowerBook G4 1.5GHz. Activity Monitor showed about 150% usage between both CPU's instead of 185% with my custom preset.
Don't know if this might help someone... but it seems to have helped me... thanks for letting me take up some room!!!
I wasn't used any of the built in presets, rather I just set up my own personal one... so I got curious and went hunting for them to see if I could SEE what was different maybe, opened the UserPresets.plist in TextEdit and had a look at the HB-iPod one and found that at the end there is a string of "stuff" that I don't understand, but obviously it matters. It wasn't at the bottom of my custom preset. So I made a backup of the file in case I messed up, made sure HB 8.5b1 was shut down after I deleted my custom preset and just made the slight alterations to a few strings and integers I wanted to the HB-iPod preset... just things like framerate, turned off chapter markers, audio bitrate and 2-pass encoding.
These are the results of ripping Supernatural Season 1 and The 4400 Seasons 1 and 2. Both ripped to disk, full extraction with MTR 2.66 first.
Video bitrate 1500 kbps
Audio bitrate 128 kbps
Stats are from iTunes which as usual lists all audio as 127 kbps:
Supernatural S1
Pilot - 1314
Wendigo - 1572
Dead In The Water - 1628
Phantom Traveler - 1628
Bloody Mary - 1335
Skin - 1485
Hook Man - 1595
Bugs - 1628
Home - 1393
Asylum - 1329
Scarecrow - 1621
Faith - 1610
Route 666 - 1395
Nightmare - 1389
The Benders - 1416
Shadow - 1393
Hell House - 1477
Something Wicked - 1548
Provenance - 1545
Dead Man's Blood - 1143
Salvation - 1402
Devil's Trap - 1436
The 4400 S1&2
The Return - 1617
The New & Improved Carl Morrissey - 1626
Becoming - 1625
Trial By Fire - 1627
White Light - 1554
Wake Up Call - 1627
Voices Carry - 1597
Weight Of The World -1627
Suffer The Children - 1596
As Fate Would Have It - 1610
Life Interrupted - 1365
Carrier - 1609
Rebirth - 1489
Hidden - 1495
Lockdown - 1626
The Fifth Page - 1627
Mommy's Bosses - 1627
Everything loaded to my iPod, no problem... as you can see The 4400 was a smashing success, Supernatural an improvement.
What else I noticed is that the encoding time took a bit longer... but wot's longer to me at this point? I'm using a brand new MacBook Pro 2.33GHz versus my PowerBook G4 1.5GHz. Activity Monitor showed about 150% usage between both CPU's instead of 185% with my custom preset.
Don't know if this might help someone... but it seems to have helped me... thanks for letting me take up some room!!!
Oh... I suppose someone is going to be curious as to why bother with all the small 320xh files... I'm an iPod freak... my aim is to have a nice library of excellent iPod optimized files. The smaller files work and look better on the iPod and take less time to encode.
I have no desire to jump on the HD TV bandwagon as yet, my 20yr. old 27" Sony TV is slowly going on me and I'm not even sure what I'm going to replace it with... maybe another standard def TV for dirt cheap that will suit me fine or a lower priced LCD just to bow to the pressure of technology.
I have no desire to jump on the HD TV bandwagon as yet, my 20yr. old 27" Sony TV is slowly going on me and I'm not even sure what I'm going to replace it with... maybe another standard def TV for dirt cheap that will suit me fine or a lower priced LCD just to bow to the pressure of technology.
I'm in the same boat as you. What does amaze me is how good 320 video looks on large screen rear projections and LCDs.voxsola wrote:Oh... I suppose someone is going to be curious as to why bother with all the small 320xh files... I'm an iPod freak... my aim is to have a nice library of excellent iPod optimized files. The smaller files work and look better on the iPod and take less time to encode.
Well... there you have it! I suspect I'll probably be in the market for a 32" to 37" LCD TV when nitty comes down to gritty fairly soon as the old tube fails me... 
As for HB 8.5b1, I'm impressed and happy... it's turning out to be a super version for me, most errors have been "operator caused"...
I love the preset feature... happy camper here... 
As for HB 8.5b1, I'm impressed and happy... it's turning out to be a super version for me, most errors have been "operator caused"...
I love the preset feature... happy camper here...