Best settings for ripping blu ray 1080p 7.1 surround sound?

[pete_agreatguy]

Description of problem or question:

Hi all,

I started to rip my blu rays to my media drive using both MakeMKV and Handbrake.

Q) What are the best settings people use for having the best quality with a small file size, specifically for a blu ray 1080p rip with 7.1 surround sound?

e.g. I ripped Incredibles 2 within 30 hours using the settings quoted below, managing to reduce the file down from 24.6GB to only 5.24GB.

H.265 MKV 1080p Same as Source:

Dimensions:
width: 1920
height: 804
anamorphic: Auto
Modules: 2
Cropping: Auto

Filters:
Detelecine: Off
Interlace Detection: Default
Deinterlace: Decomb
Denoise: Off
Sharpen: Off
Deblock: Off
Rotate: 0
Preset: Default

Video:
Video Codec: H.265 (x265)
Framerate FPS: Same as source
Constant Framerate
Encoder Preset: Very Slow
Encoder Tune: None
Encoder Profile: Main
Constant Quality: 22 RF

Audio:
I tend to stick with the same as the original for 7.1 or 5.1 Surround Sound.

Subtitles:
Foreign Audio Scan
Forced Only = ticked
Burn In = ticked
Default = unticked

HandBrake version: 1.2.2 (2019022300)

Operating system and version: Win 7 Ultimate x64 bit - latest updates

System Specs:

Case = Phanteks Enthoo Pro TG
PSU = Antec HCP850W
Motherboard = Asus P6T
CPU = Intel i7 975 (stock) with Thermalright Archon SB-E X2 cooler
RAM = 8GB GSkill PC3-12800
GPU = EVGA GTX1080 8GB
Hard Drives = S/G 480GB SSD + S/S 500GB SSD + HGST 2TB + WD 8TB
Optical Drive = PIONEER BD-RW BDR-209D

NOTE: I plan on upgrading to Windows 10 and an AMD Ryzen 3000 build this year in Q3 / Q4.

HandBrake Activity Log ***required***
See Log file from Incredibles 2 rip

[Woodstock]

Your encode would have been a bit faster with decomb turned off. Maybe 5% or so. It would not have affected quality. Very few Bluray sources are interlaced, but they do exist.

If you had determined the subtitle track before encoding (playing the video in VLC and looking at which tracks have the subtitles you want), you could have saved the separate pass needed for handbrake to determine it.

For 1080p content, I wouldn't have bothered with x265; h.264 is faster and more compatible with devices. With a 4-core processor of similar speed to yours, my two encodes of I2 (one "Super HQ RF20 MKV with all audio" for me, one "HQ one audio track MP4" for those who don't care so much) took only 7 hours total using x264, so you can see what a speed impact x265 had. SHQ was 7.7GB, HQ was 2.6GB.

Best settings for audio are always pass it through if you can.

[pete_agreatguy]

Best settings for audio are always pass it through if you can.

Thanks for your advice. I won't lose quality by using the H.264 compared to using H.265 will I?

What did you mean by "always pass the audio through if you can"?

Sorry, complete amature with little experience of doing this.

[Woodstock]

If your target device is compatible with the original sound codecs, using "Pass through" will preserve the highest quality sound. The log you posted is using "copy:dtshd" (which is the pass through).

Both h.264 and h.265 can give you quality video, with the proper settings. h.265 is "more efficient" for larger images, so the files CAN be smaller than the equivalent h.264 file, but the differences at or below 1080p video are small. Especially when you compare the computing power needed to render them.

Neither of the computers I have UHD monitors on right now have h.265 decoder hardware, so they struggle to render video at 30 frames per second. Same video using h.264 is larger, but the h.264 hardware in the computers have no problem with doing 60fps. Because of that, I rarely encode anything with h.265, because it's slow to encode, and rendered poorly.

But that's MY hardware, not yours. You could have h.265 hardware acceleration in your video card, so the argument is about whether the difference in size is worth the encoding time.

I suggest you take a section of video (say, a chapter of Incredibles 2 that has a fair amount of action and detail), encode it with both x264 and x265, and compare size and apparent quality, played on your hardware. Look at both picture quality and motion. Is one better than the other, in your opinion? Because your opinion is the one that counts.

Note: Changing JUST the encoder used is not an exact science - the "other settings" have somewhat different meanings in the two encoders. But, it's still a good test of the relative quality.