Home Movie DVD, Best Handbrake Settings to Convert to iPad??

[johnrr6]

Hello. Am new to the forum and have researched till I am blue in the face. Thought I'd ask some experts. I have 8 DVDs of Home Movies of my family (16 mm film) that were converted years ago to DVD format and display at aspect ratio of 4:3. Each DVD has a play time of approx 2 hours. VLC tells me they are:
Codec Mpeg 2 (mpgv)
Resolution 720x480
Display Resolution 720x480
Frame Rate 29.970029
Decoded Format Planar 4:2:0 YUV

I no longer have access to the source 16mm film and to be frank...even if I did it may be unrecoverable because of storage issues in my sister's house and some water damage. So I'm stuck with the DVD's as my best source material.

My entire family and relatives have all basically joined the "Apple Ecosystem" and all have iPads and iPhones. And since I am retired now my family has appointed me head movie maker and wants these movies on their iPads.

Hence, I want to create digital MP4s of each one of these disks. I have experimented with several of the different Handbrake 1.0.7 presets (Fast 480P, HQ 480p 30 Surround, Legacy iPad etc) but feel I am missing something as the video quality of the DVD is rather good when played on my PC, but when I have converted to iPad and uploaded to iCloud Photo Library, the quality degrades. I called Apple and they swear they are not doing any further transcoding on the file in iCloud Photo Library. As long as it has an MP4 file extension and is below 5 GB, it will load into iCloud Photo Library (at least according to the two Apple Engineers I spoke to and yes I bumped the question up the chain as the normal Apple support folks had no clue).

I'd like to keep the files smaller than 3 GB each if possible.

What do you feel the BEST Handbrake settings would be for this type of video conversion to iPad.

Any help/advice most appreciated.

[rollin_eng]

Could you please post your logs, instructions can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=31236

[Woodstock]

"Best" for any of us may have zero bearing on "best" for YOU.

Do you want to preserve the look of a film transfer, or smooth out the "noise"? This has a large effect on the size of the output, and the time to encode.

[johnrr6]

Yes....it is subjective and thanks for helping me specify.

I want clarity more than anything. Reduce the fuzziness, sharpen it. So I guess it would be "smooth out the noise."

And @rollin_eng I will try to post some logs today on settings I have used so far. Wife has me working a honey do ATM.

[BradleyS]

Your iPad has a display resolution far higher than DVD. So the HandBrake'd video is actually scaled up on playback, which may look a bit fuzzy. Not much can be done about this. Using one of the HQ presets is probably sufficient.

[johnrr6]

Your iPad has a display resolution far higher than DVD. So the HandBrake'd video is actually scaled up on playback, which may look a bit fuzzy. Not much can be done about this. Using one of the HQ presets is probably sufficient.

So Setting Preset Apple 720p30 Surround looks like the setting to try and I have not tried that setting yet.

Will give it a go and report back.....Thanks!!

[BradleyS]

Just a reminder, HandBrake will not upscale your source from 480p to 720p. The resolution and frame rate indicated by the presets are limits, meaning up to 720p at 30 fps.

At some point in the future we plan to allow upscaling but it requires an overhaul of various settings and controls. Even then, it's generally not possible to recreate detail that isn't there; upscaling in HandBrake would just take more storage space to do what your iPad already does on the fly during playback.

[johnrr6]

So the blurryness on the iPad is not necessarily the source movie's fault....

It's the iPad hardware upscaling the movie, good to know!

Would it be better to try to encode somehow so that although the movies would be smaller and have black bars around the edges when displaying on the iPad, they would still be a visual higher quality? Right now the movies are displaying at full screen.

[johnrr6]

And I am sorry to be asking what are probably dumb questions but while I am fairly computer and technology savvy, I know nothing about this new world of digital video I am entering.

I am learning and thank you for the help!

[BradleyS]

No worries, questions are welcome here.

The feature you mention is planned for a later HandBrake release but it probably won't be soon. That said, it's probably not going to be an exceptional help in your situation.

If you're really serious about getting a high quality upscale, a professional video person may be able to synthesize the appearance of slightly more quality and sharpness for you. I've done this many times; it requires specific video editing/restoration tools and can be somewhat time consuming. I'm not sure it's worth the investment of time/money unless neither is an object for you, but perhaps you should seek out professional services if you absolutely want a high quality upscale.

[johnrr6]

I will check into the costs of a professional. My take is that my family all thinks this:
is no big deal
not their time involved so they don't care how much work I'd have to do
And want it free

LOL....so money is probably out of the question.

Quick question: Is there a way to edit in Handbrake?? I want to add black with white text title at the beginning of each movie I make detaling subject and date. I have experimented with some NLEs like iMovie and PowerDirector15 on the PC but they all want to RE-Render the file after the tile is added. And then their rendering settings don't match up so I just create even bigger files and sometimes LOSE quality

[mduell]

No.

[BradleyS]

HandBrake doesn't edit aside from start/stop and some filters. iMovie is probably your best option.

[johnrr6]

Thanks!! iMovie is simple and I love it but the production settings are so limited. It also has no aspect ratio selection which I think (correct me if I'm wrong) causes some addition problems with my source material which is 4x3. And iMovie has a stupid limitation of 15 minutes to load in the iCloud which I can work around in various ways but it's a pain. Or it also tries to store the Movie in the Theater which is fine but my goal is to store all these videos in iCloud Photo Library....which is actually pretty slick....it just seems like it's kind of hard for you to get anything longer than 15 minutes in it....LOL

If II was going to use iMove....what would be the best production settings for the produced movie.