Constant quality settings for HD

[tuscanidream]

I have been ripping my regular dvd's using handbrake mac so I can watch my movies via iTunes and apple tv. I usually use the constant quality at 1500kbps 2 pass turbo. Everything looks great.

My friend copied two of my HD movies for me (no Blueray on the mac yet). One is a 720p, and the other is a 1080p. Handbrake quit trying to convert it. I installed 64-bit handbrake and it works! However, what should I set my constant quality setting at for 720p and 1080p?

Thanks!

[TedJ]

I usually use the constant quality at 1500kbps 2 pass turbo.

I think you're confusing yourself here - what you're describing above is 2-pass ABR (average bitrate) encoding. For HD material, you're probably better off going with actual constant quality (CRF) encoding... something in the vicinity of 55% would be a good starting point.

http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/ConstantQuality

[tuscanidream]

You are correct. I usually use a setting of 1500 ABR.

So using a constant quality setting would be better than using a average bitrate?

[TedJ]

Definitely. Constant quality delivers the quality of a 2-pass ABR encode in a single pass without all that faffing about trying to determine what a suitable bitrate should be for any given source or resolution.

My rule of thumb is ~55% for HD sources and ~60% for SD sources. That's it.

[mlaugh01]

would you recommend these settings watching on a 60" HDTV after copying them? I have been using around 80% constant, and now that you "taught" me how to keep the chapters in order, it is all good!

[jkbc]

would you recommend these settings watching on a 60" HDTV after copying them? I have been using around 80% constant, and now that you "taught" me how to keep the chapters in order, it is all good!

As developers and mods have pointed out across the forums, anything over around 65% CQ is going to be overkill. 80% absolutely falls into this category. When I started using 0.9.4 several months back I had to write new presets. Despite what everyone was telling me in the chatroom, I kept tinkering with creeping that quality slider north. Eventually I stopped being bullheaded (for once in my life!) and I now run all my encodes at 60%.

[jdm]

As developers and mods have pointed out across the forums, anything over around 65% CQ is going to be overkill. 80% absolutely falls into this category. When I started using 0.9.4 several months back I had to write new presets. Despite what everyone was telling me in the chatroom, I kept tinkering with creeping that quality slider north. Eventually I stopped being bullheaded (for once in my life!) and I now run all my encodes at 60%.

I think it's really a matter of perception and personal preferece. I've found that when I use the High Profile preset, with CQ set to 60.78%, the encode looks good, but loses a lot of the background detail. The whole purpose of having a High Def source, for me, is to see the definition. What I've found works best for me is to open the .m2ts file in MediaInfo, take the avg. bitrate it shows and set a 2 pass encoding with the avg. bitrate set to about 60% of what MediaInfo shows me.

The files don't come out as small as when setting CQ to 60%, but with the "stare and compare" tests me and my roommates have done, it's a fair compromise between retaining visual detail and making more room on the HD.