Ripping Sound Issues - Subwoofer (Explosions)

[nightstrm]

Yeah, thanks both of you.

I mean i downloaded snapshot 5.

I just tryed encoding a chapter, one CQ of 65% and the other ABR of 2000.

To me, it was very very hard to tell a difference, honestly, I do not even think I did.

Can you guys really see a difference between the two?

Why did you decide to use 65%?

[jzietman]

People having been suggesting 62% recently, and the AppleTV preset was just bumped down to 59%. 65% will result in a file significantly larger than 59% and you most likely won't be able to tell any difference between the two.

[rhester]

It depends a LOT on the source.

2000 is fixed. On some sources it will be far too much, on others too little. CQ adjusts to compensate. Thus, the two cannot be compared except over infinite sources.

Rodney

[SecondHand]

Yeah....

65% was a random number, primarily used though because that's the highest I remember someone saying you should go, so I simply used it as a test.

And like I said, with the 2 movies I tried with 2 separate setting for each, it was impossible for me to tell a difference.

And I guess I get what your saying, I guess there is not perfect setting, I was just trying to get close to one....

So I might at well still with 2000 I suppose? That way at least I know what the file output size will be.

I will try some more movies, I just really would have dreaded realizing at some point CQ as better and having to redo them all.

If the CQ being turned down, esentially resulted in smaller file size, and up, bigger, why even include both. Why not just either pick ABR or CQ as your only option, and adjust accordingly for the size you prefer then?

[jzietman]

Because you can't predict the size of the encode you're going to get with CRF (the implementation of CQ that handbrake uses, better than old-fashioned CQ). I really would suggest that you use 59% CRF rather than 2000 kbps. It's not that the ABR is hands-down worse, it's just that it's not as sophisticated as CRF, and on some movies it won't be enough to look all that great, while on others it'll take up much more space than necessary. For instance, today I encoded the film Amelie at CRF 59% and the average bitrate of the resulting file was only ~1450 kbps. If I'd forced it to encode at 2000, it would have been unnecessarily large, and some more complicated parts might not have had enough bits to be encoded nearly transparently.

The majority of frequent posters here seem to use CRF. If you're worried about feeling like you made the wrong choice down the road with ABR, i'd suggest just starting with crf. You've only encoded a few movies so far, so it's not like you've wasted too much time.

[nightstrm]

Agreed -- I recommend just using the universal preset in snapshot 5, or waiting for .9.3.

[SecondHand]

Hey guys, thanks for all of the information.

So what I get out of it is, technically, the ABR is only really better suited if you want smaller file sizes, or if you want to be able to predict them.

1) It is not necessarily better quality, whereas with CQ, you will be getting solid quality across the board (essentially better than ABR), but the size can be iffy, is that correct?

And this might seem like a stupid question but, I noticed you said CRF vs. CQ, CRF being a updated version of CQ. What is CRF?

2) I have snapshot 5, and I went under the universal settings and it STILL said constant quality not CRF, which was defaulted at 59%, so what is CRF vs. CQ?

3) When you say 59%, what does that really mean? I would imagine it's not only 59% of the actual movie quality, because the movies still come out great.... so what does that 59% really entail? How did the 59% even come to be a good number to use? And if between like 59 and 60 is perfect, why would anyone EVER want to do like 10 or 100?

4) With the CQ on, instead of ABR, I should still be using the deinterlace and decomb (deafault) to still AUTOMATICALLY detect interlaced movies, aka, it won't do it (and potentitally hurt the quality) unless it automatically detects it is there, correct?

This is what I got...

VIDEO:
MP4 File
Codec - H.264 (x264)
Framerate (FPS) - Same as source
2 Pass Encoding - ON (Turbo First Pass: OFF)
Constant Quality - 59%

PICTURE:
Anamorphic - Strict
Crop - Automatic
Detelecine - ON
Decomb - Default

AUDIO:
Track 1 - Source (AC3 5.1) | Code (AAC - faac) | Mixdown (DPL II) DRC = 1.5
Track 2 - Source (AC3 5.1) | Code (AC3 Pass Thru) | Mixdown (AC3 Passthru) DRC = N/A
Subtitles - Autoselect (Force Subtitles Only)

CHAPTERS:
Chapters - Enabled

If you could answer those 4 questions it would be really appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

[jzietman]

Ok, the majority of your questions are very well answered in the Handbrake Documentation. You will get a detailed and complete answer there to question 3, and after reading there (it's not that long) you should feel like you understand better what's going on with ABR and CRF in general.

1) Yes

2) The "constant quality" that is said is just some text in the GUI, it doesn't mean that it uses CQ or CRF (the difference is explained in the documentation). Handbrake by default uses CRF instead of CQ, so don't wrory about it, we were just letting you know the correct terminology so you didn't get confused when we used it.

3) Read the documentation. No one with functioning eyes would ever use 10. No one should ever use 100. You'll see why.

4) correct

[rhester]

So what I get out of it is, technically, the ABR is only really better suited if you want smaller file sizes, or if you want to be able to predict them.

Not necessarily. CRF often uses less than 2000kbps average bitrate for "clean" or low-complexity titles (depending on the CQ value you specify, of course). ABR doesn't mean "small" as much as it means "consistent/predictable size".

Rodney

[SecondHand]

Well, thanks for the help. That seems to all make sense.

And I am assuming the documentation your are talking about is the Handbrake User Guide, found under Help in Handbrake?

I will read up more on that again, and see if it helps make more sense for me.

But, if all the pro's here are using CQ (CRF), at 59%, I guess that's what I shall be using then.

[SecondHand]

I finally read the whole getting started guide again.

Random question though...

It appears as though 2 pass encoding on ABR first makes a "log" to get the encode more accurate.

So why is their not a 2 pass option on CQ. Couldn't a log be just as useful here, or since it's do a solid 60%, it's more accurate already and does not need a log?

Please explain!

Thanks.

[cvk_b]

Please explain!

You need comprehension of x264's rate control methods.

[SecondHand]

Oh I know, I need more comprehension of a lot of this stuff, but the idea is for me to learn haha.

With that said, care to give a basic elaboration at all?

[cvk_b]

Oh I know, I need more comprehension of a lot of this stuff, but the idea is for me to learn haha.

With that said, care to give a basic elaboration at all?

Considering your question, I'd start here: http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/RateControlMethods

The wiki's really good. Give it a chance.

[intlflynn]

It's a bit late, but for what it's worth:

Anyways, with all of that said... the 5.1 really isn't working correctly. I mean the sound itself is crystal clear - I use the AC 3 (5.1) for Track 1 and the DLP + AC3 for Track 2.

I am not sure if the issue is simply there is no correlation between the surround sound directly hooked up to the X-Box or what, but it's frustrating having none of the scenes in the movie using the sub really or the 5.1 not working for intense scenes.

Looking at the documentation DPII takes a 5.1 sound track and turns it into 2.0. I would guess that your xbox is playing the DPII track rather than the AC3 and so, as you said, is using only the front R and L speakers and no subwoofer.

The xBox will only play low-complexity (2-channel) AAC audio in an h.264 encode, which means it's grabbing the 2-channel DPII track and not the 5.1-channel AC3 one. I run all my encodes with audio like yours just waiting for the day Microsoft releases an update to add 5.1-channel AC3 support. Here's more xBox video playback info: http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/n ... ckfaq.aspx