Bitrate, 2-pass encoding, and SPEED! a.k.a. A little help?

[PLDM]

I've just under-taken the task of converting my DVD collection, and after leaving HandBrake running for the past 18 hours, I've just got through the first 5 disks. Now this might not seem like a crazy amount of time, but after quickly toting my collection at somewhere around 300 individual movies (+TV shows), I figure i'll be lucky to get through the whole lot by around June 2009, I've I don't go to work... Or sleep...

So! I have a few questions of you fine people of the HandBrake forum about ways of speeding this up, and hopefully this information will be of use to other DVD-hoarders.

First, my specs:
24" iMac (HD), Core2Duo 2.33 GHz, with 2GB RAM. I've got an internal 750GB internal harddrive, so space isn't really an issue.

At the moment I'm running HandBrake with these changed options:
AVC/H.264 Video
Average Bitrate: 2500
2-pass encoding

And at the moment I'm using MacTheRipper to rip the disks and queueing them up in HandBrake.

I've read a couple of things on the forums (yes I've searched before posting, no, I'm not a complete internet Noob, and yes, I'm only posting to find things I couldn't through searching) concerning bitrate being best suited at around just 1500, and that 1-pass encoding is fine for movies ripped at under 3000kbps. Is this all need to create watchable files at a decent quality?

I've just got my hands on a dirt cheap external hard drive and DVD/RW, but just one enclosure, so can only use one at a time... Would I be better off running two versions of HandBrake creating files on different drives, or using two DVD drives to get through the disk ripping faster?

Wow, I really didn't mean to go on so much! Any help or advce anyone could give me about my dilemas would be much aprechiated!

[jbrjake]

bitrate being best suited at around just 1500, and that 1-pass encoding is fine for movies ripped at under 3000kbps. Is this all need to create watchable files at a decent quality?

1-pass abr is never fine, in my opinion. If you need a set bitrate, use 2-pass. If you want to do only one pass, give up control over the bitrate and use CRF, which is the only worthwhile 1-pass method, imo.

1500 is not a "best suited" bitrate, it's just a lot of people here are not quality purists or simply don't look at their encodes closely enough to notice the artifacts. Even encoding from the same source, h.264 requires half the bitrate of mpeg-2 to reach transparency. Re-encoding mpeg-2, you need more like 75% of the bitrate to reach transparency. Of course, at that point most people say you might as well just keep the original DVD. So you're going to use a bitrate that isn't "best" as a compromise. 2500 will be a little high for some movies, but it will be too low for others. If you really do want to drop below 2 megabits, I wouldn't go beneath 1800.

The best answer I can give you is the old chestnut: "there is no best." You have to decide on a dvd-by-dvd basis and it's all tied up in how you, subjectively, register the encode's quality.

[petvas]

One pass works great for me. I rip at 3000kbps and the movies look just great on my hdtv philips.

[jbrjake]

the movies look just great on my hdtv philips.

Statements like this are meaningless if you do not include variables such as:

* video resolution
* quality of source
* display resolution
* viewing distance

After all, over-compressed standard def digital cable streams look just great on my 1080p hdtv -- if I sit on the other side of the room.

[petvas]

Source is always DVD-9

Video Resolution is the anamorphic output that Handbrake recognises.
My tv is 32" and viewing distance is almost three meters. I checked the quality from 50cm and it was still good...

My TV is HD-Ready, meaning it can do up to 1080i but not 1080p