I tried HandBrake about a year ago when iPod video bitrate was maxed at 768kbps with 320x240 and was very unhappy with the quality of the encode. I was, therefore, uninterested in buying the video iPod as I was looking at it as a portable video player with the iPod AV Connection Kit and a projector for school or a small LCD monitor with composite input for the car.
Now that the bitrate is up to 1.5mbps along with the update to MediaFork I thought I would give it another try. Wow what a difference! I still see some artifacting with high motion scenes but when compared to an XviD encoded with the same specs, the video is clearer and more detailed. I am very impressed.
I compared the AVC and XviD encoded with MediaFork to the original DVD and the color saturation is muted on the encodes. This isn't a major problem as color should be able to be adjusted on the monitor (I don't know if this can be adjusted on the iPod itself) to correct this.
I also tried an XviD encode wit AutoGK and near the same specs and the color stayed true in it. So it is something that happens with the conversion/encoding within Mediafork. This is a very minor problem, but I would like to not have to make those adjustments if a tweak to the program could be made to correct this.
The MediaFork Xvid has a lot more noticeable artifacts than the AutoGK XviD did. Fine detail was noticeably better on the AutoGK XviD also. len0x, the developer of AutoGK, knows so much about optimizing encoding that these results don't surprise me. Generally though, most people looking at using MediaFork wouldn't notice most of these differences, especially using AVC.
I was also curious what possible benefits the x264b30 has over the x264 or x264b13?
I am using Windows and would like (like most other Windows users) a GUI, but the CLI is fairly simple and does the job well. Thanks for a great piece of software. I am anxiously looking forward to future developments. I hope this helps. Please let me know if I can help out in any way in the future.
Here are my conversions for reference:
2 min 34 sec clip, DVD files were 133MB, 720x480
~\mediaforkcli -i ~\movie\files -o ~\save\file.mp4 -e x264b30 -b 1450 -E faac -B 160 -2 -w 640
Yielded a 29.4MB file, 640x272
~\mediaforkcli -i ~\movie\files -o ~\save\file.mp4 -e xvid -b 1450 -E faac -B 160 -2 -w 640
Yielded a 29.3MB file, 640x272
AutoGK: Xvid, VBR MP3 at 160kbps, custom size of 30MB.
Yielded a 30.2MB file, 640x272