About me – I promise this is relevant to my questions. I am bereft of eyesight and have been since birth; am a self-proclaimed audiophile, audio engineer, and computer programmer, but prefer audio manipulation. Moreover,, I am a collector of first issue/edition pressings of films [Criterion titles remain sealed] on DVD in the main. I remultiplex to the Matroska container from my DVDs for my media server, but also download the highest quality files from the internet especially for VHS transfers. Naturally, I have no concept of how anything looks, and thus cannot preview any images before or after a transcode.
The afore-linked well-written page of the tips pertains to H.264, but I use H.265 and the latest nightly build of HandBrake. I am concerned only to preserve the utmost quality from these internet source files , and thus want not to damage them. I also have terabytes of space and will sacrifice space for quality at the lossless level. Considering I am using a 2018 MacBook Pro with a Core i9 six-core 2,9GHz to 4,8GHz processor, 32 gigabytes of DDR4 RAM, 4 terabyte SSD, and discrete graphics chip, I am not concerned to make my system work hard. In fact, to transcode is one of the reasons I purchased it last year. Below are my settings, and below that are some questions to which I cannot find answers [and I tried for hours]. The audio is passed through always without exception as are sub-titles.
- Video Tab:
- Video Encoder: H.265 (x265) – Most efficient by far and compatible with everything I use.
- Quality: constant – Of course.
- RF: 0,00 – I know most would call this senseless, but this is the only way to preserve maximum quality from anything that must be decoded thereby degrading quality when encoding whilst removing bits even if no sighted person can discern. Binary is tricky if you do not understand how binary works, but when bits are removed regardless what the eyes can perceive, that means quality is sacrificed and that is not acceptable to me. I guess this is analogous to psychoacoustic analysis of lossy audio – anomalies which I can hear every time I listen to any lossy audio no matter the codec or settings.
- FPS: same as source – I like to keep as much original as possible so I never modify this.
- Frame Rate: variable – Continuing in the spirit of efficiency…
- Encoder Options: placebo – Another point of contention amongst users that this is senseless, but this I discover is truly what results in a super efficient file as the final product. Time is no object for me, and my system can handle this.
- Tune: none
- Fast Decode: tick box unticked
- Profile: auto – I think HandBrake is more trustworthy to choose than I.
- Level: auto – I think HandBrake is more trustworthy to choose than I.
Filters Tab:- Detelecine: default – I presume this will be used only when HandBrake deems necessary.
- Interlace Detection: default – I know not if this has any affect if the Deinterlace pop-up menu that follows is off which it is here just in case.
- Deinterlace: off
- Colour: greyscale: tick box unticked
- Rotate: 0º
- Flip: tick box unticked
- Deblock: off
- Denoise: off
- Sharpen: off
Dimensions Tab:- Anamorphic: auto – I never modify this or the storage size parameters.
- Modulus: 2 – I never change this either. I wish I understood the mathematics here although I do understand the operator of modulo.
My questions:
- Does the Interlace Detect setting have any effect if the Deinterlace setting is on off? If so, what are the effects? Detection implies it will detect but not actually deinterlace.
- Considering I cannot see anything before or after and have no manner by which to verify if I destroy or improve the video streams, is it safe to leave enabled the Detelecine and Interlace Detection settings at default? Most of the films I will convert were sourced from VHS, but I am sure the quality and nuances vary. Default is vague; I wish the HandBrake documentation was not sparse in this regard.
- Do you recommend to enable the Deinterlace setting in general? The options are YADIF and Decomb. If so, which and why?
- Do you recommend to leave disabled the Deblock and Denoise filters? I like the idea of a clean picture, but obviously want not ruin anything I cannot see and never know.
- Do you have any additional tips with regards to H.265 and Matroska? Am I doing anything gravely wrong to guaranteed ruin each picture?
I dig details – the more verbose the better. Much thanks in advance for any insight.