Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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KenithO
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Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

Would like to use HandBrake to convert some DVDs and Blue-Rays to H265 with No or Minimal Quality loss.

Checked HandBrake forum using keywords handbrake to convert mpeg2 to h.265 but found nothing.

Googled using same keywords and got ~25.9K results (with "..." got nothing).

Appreciate any tips or recommendations by HandBrake users as to what has worked the best to convert MPEG2 to H265 with no quality loss.

Since am new to HandBrake was first looking for a Guide or Tutorial how to convert MPEG2 to H265 with no quality loss but to date have not found any.

Thanks
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JohnAStebbins
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by JohnAStebbins »

1. Pick a preset appropriate to the playback environment
2. Slide the quality slider to the right until you are satisfied with the quality
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

John,

Thanks for the tips!

Problem with being new to HandBrake is I do Not even know the terminology.

For example:
1. Pick a preset appropriate to the playback environment. Is there a beginners guide or tutorial because have no idea what preset is appropriate. Am guessing it probably depends on hardware?

2. Slide the quality slider to the right until you are satisfied with the quality. Is this done in realtime?

While I have found YouTube Handbrake Tutorials like How to use Handbrake (tutorial) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLiQPqHRA-s all that I have found to date have been how to get max compression to decrease upload time.

Searched using keywords Handbrake Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss got Nothing with "..." and a lot for No "..."

Did find "dvd to mkv h 265" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ysDD-X7G-I but is for [Removed Dubious Product Reference] video converter.

The closest so far is "How To Convert Blu-ray (.ISO File) to .MKV (H.265 HEVC) With HandBrake Software" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=613nO7TFxSY but Not in English

Have I missed any English Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss Tutorials?

As a HandBrake beginner I really need a guide or manual! Do you know of any?

Thanks again for your help!
Woodstock
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by Woodstock »

Two of your three example videos are for older versions of handbrake. The middle one is, too, but not too old. And any video claiming "compression with no quality loss" is not talking about handbrake, because it isn't going to really do "lossless" encoding. In the case of DVD sources - the quality ship sailed when the disk was pressed, and you can't get it back. It's not as bad for BDs, but still, you're dealing with an already-compressed source, so you're limiting the additional quality lost, at best.

As for "guide" - there's this thing kids do called "play", which applies to this, too. It doesn't cost you anything but time to experiment with the controls. For the majority of users, you're not dealing with creating masters for pressing UHD disks, you're concerned with making smaller files that don't look bad on your TV or table.

Start with the provided presets. Does the result look good? Is the file size about right? WIN!

Quality look kind of ragged? Move the "Quality" slider on the video tab towards "placebo". Quality good but size too big? Move the slider the other way, encode a part of the file, and see what it looks like.
mduell
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by mduell »

KenithO wrote: Tue Aug 21, 2018 5:03 pm1. Pick a preset appropriate to the playback environment. Is there a beginners guide or tutorial because have no idea what preset is appropriate. Am guessing it probably depends on hardware?

2. Slide the quality slider to the right until you are satisfied with the quality. Is this done in realtime?
1. What are you going to playback on? A PC? Some tablet? An Apple TV? Pick the preset for the device, or use one of the 480p presets that suits your preferences (like HQ).

2. No, do an encode with a setting and see what you think about the output.
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

Hi Woodstock and mduell,

Thanks for the comments and questions.

Are there any new YouTube tutorials for HandBrake that either of you can recommend?

Would like to playback on a large 4K TV so am guessing it is best to do some short tests first. Any tips for doing this?

As for size this is not a problem because am not going to do any uploading.

Thanks again for your comments!
rollin_eng
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by rollin_eng »

If size is not a problem you are probably better off just sticking with the originals.
mduell
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by mduell »

KenithO wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 3:29 pmAre there any new YouTube tutorials for HandBrake that either of you can recommend?

Would like to playback on a large 4K TV so am guessing it is best to do some short tests first. Any tips for doing this?

As for size this is not a problem because am not going to do any uploading.
I would go out of my way to recommend against anything seen on YouTube. It's all idiots with no clue.

Try a couple different styles of movies at a couple different reasonable RF values and see what you're willing to put up with. DVD source on a 4K TV is never going to look real good.

If size isn't a problem, why are you bothering with the encoding? Just keep the DVD rip.
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

rollin_eng and mduell,

Thanks for your comments!

"DVD source on a 4K TV is never going to look real good."

Before posting read "HandBrake 1.1.0 Released Sunday, April 8, 2018... Added new Unsharp and kernel-based Laplacian LapSharp sharpening filters"

Has anyone posted images of the improvement the new filters make?

Did some searching and found "Deep Inception-Residual Laplacian Pyramid Networks for Accurate Single Image Super-Resolution" https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1711/1711.05431.pdf

Had hoped that the latest HandBrake would both increase the video sharpness and reduce the file size for MPEG-2 videos.

Maybe this is too much to hope for, but will say I was impressed with NVIDIA's recent video "Research at NVIDIA: AI Can Now Fix Your Grainy Photos by Only Looking at Grainy Photos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp7HdI0-MIo
Woodstock
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by Woodstock »

Have you played with "sharpening" on a photo program before? Have you ever looked at the results, and thought, "Gee, that's MUCH better than it was before!"?

I know I haven't.

There is a difference between removing noise and "making it clearer". Think of it like "uncooking an egg".
rollin_eng
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by rollin_eng »

Unless your source has some specific issues encoding it will probably make it worse as you will be losing some quality in the conversion.
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

Woodstock,

"Have you played with "sharpening" on a photo program before? Have you ever looked at the results, and thought, "Gee, that's MUCH better than it was before!"? I have Not am a total beginner concerning this.

Have done some searching and to date the best I have found is "GUIDE TO IMAGE SHARPENING" https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutor ... pening.htm "Shooting technique and/or the quality of your camera lens can also impact the necessary sharpening radius. Generally, well-focused images will require a sharpening radius of 1.0 or less, while slightly out of focus images may require a sharpening radius of 1.0 or greater. Regardless, capture sharpening rarely needs a radius greater than 2.0 pixels. original soft photo
Soft Original sharpening radius too small Radius Too Small (0.2 pixels) sharpening radius too large Radius Too Large (2.0 pixels) optimal sharpening radius Radius Just Right (1.0 pixels) When trying to identify an optimum sharpening radius, make sure to view a representative region within your image that contains the focal point and/or fine detail, and view it at 100% on-screen. Keep an eye on regions with high contrast edges, since these are also more susceptible to visible halo artifacts. Don't fret over trying to get the radius "accurate" within 0.1 pixels; there's an element of subjectivity to this process, and such small differences wouldn't be distinguishable in a print."

Do not know how to attach photos so you will have to check the above website for photos. I did notice a difference between the original and optimal photos.

Have you seen the recent "Research at NVIDIA: AI Can Now Fix Your Grainy Photos by Only Looking at Grainy Photos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp7HdI0-MIo I did notice a significant improvement for their examples!

back to https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutor ... pening.htm "When noise is pronounced, capture sharpening isn't always able to be applied as aggressively and uniformly as desired."

Maybe what I am looking for is Video Noise Reduction. Did read that any sharpening should be done at very end.

Did check and NVIDIA used U-Net which is available from https://lmb.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/ ... ber/u-net/

There is a short video "5 Minute Teaser Presentation of the U-net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81AvQQnpG4Q

U-Net is available for download at bottom of https://lmb.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/ ... ber/u-net/ "We provide the u-net for download in the following archive: u-net-release-2015-10-02.tar.gz (185MB). It contains the ready trained network, the source code, the matlab binaries of the modified caffe network, all essential third party libraries, the matlab-interface for overlap-tile segmentation and a greedy tracking algorithm used for our submission for the ISBI cell tracking challenge 2015. Everything is compiled and tested only on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 and Matlab 2014b (x64)
To apply the segmentation and the tracking to the images in "PhC-C2DH-U373/01" simply run the shell script ./segmentAndTrack.sh The resulting segmentation masks will be written to "PhC-C2DH-U373/01_RES" If you do not have a CUDA-capable GPU or your GPU is smaller than mine, edit segmentAndTrack.sh accordingly (see there for documentation)."
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

rollin_eng,

"Unless your source has some specific issues encoding it will probably make it worse as you will be losing some quality in the conversion."

From what you said, seems like it is important to run a short test conversion with various settings to check if you will make an improvement.

Any tips concerning specific issues or running short tests?
Woodstock
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by Woodstock »

Tip number one: Don't be so serious about it. You say you're new at this, but your questions remind me of someone coming in for their first flight lesson, and asking about the effects of voltage fluctuation on the start procedure for the #4 engine on a 747-200.

Pick a source. When I play, I like something with a lot of motion and fine detail. Like one of the scenes where the Daleks are attacking at the beginning of Day of the Doctor. Set your chosen chapter of the source as the range for your source. Set your destination file name to something that will let you know what you were playing with for that encode, make your settings (or simply select your preset), and encode it. Watch the result, and see if you want to do something different.
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

Woodstock,

"Pick...something with a lot of motion and fine detail"

Thanks again for your comments!
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

After some searching found Neat Video https://www.neatvideo.com/

Some examples Car https://www.neatvideo.com/examples#car

Total of 10 examples

Was especially impressed by Dust and Scratches filter!

Am interested in others comments
rollin_eng
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by rollin_eng »

But why?
KenithO
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Re: Recommendations Converting MPEG2 to H265 No Quality Loss?

Post by KenithO »

rollin_eng,

" But why?" to my Was especially impressed by Dust and Scratches filter!

Because depending on the video to be restored that result may not be as goodas examples shown.

If many people have good results then should be worth while for most cases.
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