Need help understanding Constant Quality recomendations
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:21 am
On the following page:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/ConstantQuality
it is recommended that users use a constant quality setting of 20 for encoding Standard Def (DVD) material or a setting of 22 for High Def (720/1080) material.
Given the fact that... as explained elsewhere on that same page... lower numbers on this scale imply higher quality results (i.e. less compression applied), the suggested settings appear entirely counter-intutive, however I am still trying to understand the recommendations and hope that someone will explain them to me.
Given that DVD material is 480p, I would guess, based upon the recommendations, that if I had a Low Def source file (e.g. 240p) that in that case the recommended Constant Quality setting for transcoding this source material with Handbrake would be something like 18. However in that case, it seems to me, we would, in effect, be preserving a great deal of the fine detail of the original source material, however in a case like this (i.e. a 240p original) the original source material probably does not even have the level of fine detail that would be preserved at a CQ setting of 18. So this setting would be very wasteful, correct?
The bottom line is that, as I have said, I am trying hard to make sense out of the recommendations for the CQ settings, and I am just having a hard time doing that, because they don't appear to make sense to me. To be clear, I am not by any means criticizing the recommendations. I am only trying to understand them.
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/ConstantQuality
it is recommended that users use a constant quality setting of 20 for encoding Standard Def (DVD) material or a setting of 22 for High Def (720/1080) material.
Given the fact that... as explained elsewhere on that same page... lower numbers on this scale imply higher quality results (i.e. less compression applied), the suggested settings appear entirely counter-intutive, however I am still trying to understand the recommendations and hope that someone will explain them to me.
Given that DVD material is 480p, I would guess, based upon the recommendations, that if I had a Low Def source file (e.g. 240p) that in that case the recommended Constant Quality setting for transcoding this source material with Handbrake would be something like 18. However in that case, it seems to me, we would, in effect, be preserving a great deal of the fine detail of the original source material, however in a case like this (i.e. a 240p original) the original source material probably does not even have the level of fine detail that would be preserved at a CQ setting of 18. So this setting would be very wasteful, correct?
The bottom line is that, as I have said, I am trying hard to make sense out of the recommendations for the CQ settings, and I am just having a hard time doing that, because they don't appear to make sense to me. To be clear, I am not by any means criticizing the recommendations. I am only trying to understand them.