Blu Ray to H265 QSV suggestions??

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watchdoc
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:15 pm

Blu Ray to H265 QSV suggestions??

Post by watchdoc »

ripping and encoding a bunch of Blu Rays to my laptop for travel and RV consumption. Trying to figure out best settings. I've read a ton and my results have been good in testing but I feel there is room for improvement.

Hardware Acer R14 laptop I5-6200U Skylake with 8 gig ram, 256gig SSD
2TB external USB Drive
Pioneer External Blu Ray (BDR-xd05S) drive in Performance mode

Test Blu Ray is Fifth Element
Current procedure is to rip movie to harddrive using AnyDVD rip to file/folder. This takes approx 35-39 minutes. IMGBURN and AnyDVD rip to .ISO take same amount of time. Before I enabled performance mode on the Pioneer, it was 90 minutes.

Load folder into Handbrake 1.2.2 and Encode. Test results as follows
"fast" 1080p preset .MP4 H264 QSV with all defaults generated a file size of 9.2 gig and looked and sounded great
"fast" 1080p preset .MP4 H265 QSV with all defaults generated a file size of 4.5 gig and looked and sounded great

QSV encoding times were similar at approx 1 hour for H264 and H265. Non QSV encoding times were all 5 to 7+ hours and I abandon encoding. I'm not interested in long encoding times so I will be sticking with QSV. I understand that x264 and 10/12 bit x265 encoding may yield better results but I'm not interested in long encoding times which leaves me using QSV. BTW, I'm averaging 40+fps with QSV with this setup. I like that my procedure is only 2 steps and takes less than 2 hours.

So why not just use the "fast" 1080p preset and be done with it? Like I said, I feel like I'm leaving some quality and or space on the table and I would like some feedback from other more experienced users. I would also like better audio. My test encodes were the default AAC 160kbs downmix to stereo. I would like to improve that and I'm not sure if I should just change it to 320 AAC or just do passthru AAC?

Thanks ahead of time for your imput
Woodstock
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Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:39 am

Re: Blu Ray to H265 QSV suggestions??

Post by Woodstock »

If you're using QSV, you're leaving "quality and space on the table", because QSV isn't particularly efficient. More so than the fast software preset does.

With 1080p video, fast x264 vs. QSV h265 may be a better for quality and space. The equation trends to h265 encoding above that.
watchdoc
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:15 pm

Re: Blu Ray to H265 QSV suggestions??

Post by watchdoc »

Can you be more specific on which preset to use? If I use the fast 1080p preset and H264 with x264 my encode time jumps over 3 hours.
mduell
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Re: Blu Ray to H265 QSV suggestions??

Post by mduell »

watchdoc wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:43 pmSo why not just use the "fast" 1080p preset and be done with it? Like I said, I feel like I'm leaving some quality and or space on the table
Yea, you are. The classic tradeoff allows you to pick two of fast, small, and good; you picked fast by going with QSV, so your remaining choices are between good and small. If you want bigger files with better quality, turn the quality up; if you want smaller files with worse quality, turn the quality down. It's going to come down to your personal preference where the right point is on that axis for you.
watchdoc wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:43 pmI would also like better audio. My test encodes were the default AAC 160kbs downmix to stereo. I would like to improve that and I'm not sure if I should just change it to 320 AAC or just do passthru AAC?
It's highly unlikely your Blu-ray sources have AAC audio, so passthrough is just going to use the fallback encoder. If you have a 5.1 system, passthrough AC3 would be a good choice, with a fallback encoder of AC3. Depending on your various playback environments limitations, you may also need a stereo AAC track in the file.
watchdoc
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:15 pm

Re: Blu Ray to H265 QSV suggestions??

Post by watchdoc »

mduell wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:15 pm
It's highly unlikely your Blu-ray sources have AAC audio, so passthrough is just going to use the fallback encoder. If you have a 5.1 system, passthrough AC3 would be a good choice, with a fallback encoder of AC3. Depending on your various playback environments limitations, you may also need a stereo AAC track in the file.
This is a good point. All the environments I plan to use these for are Stereo so I guess it’s better to save the space and let the encoder handle the downmix and just choose an audio bitrate that sounds good.
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