Getting best quality for iPad out of old 720p DVDs?

[mAurelius]

Description of problem or question:
I have all 10 seasons of Friends on older DVDs that are 4:3, 720p. Now that Friends is no longer on Netflix, I want to burn these to watch on iPad. However, when I did it with the Apple 1080p60 Surround preset, the quality is pretty bad on iPad. Everything looks grainy and low-resolution. Is this the best I'm going to get, or can something be done to improve quality? I don't mind a larger file size or slower encoding time if it would improve quality.

I have an iPad Air 2.

Steps to reproduce the problem (If Applicable):

Handbrake, latest version, Apple 1080p60 Surround


HandBrake version (e.g., 1.0.0):

v 1.3.0



Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, Windows 10 Creators Update):

macOS Catalina


HandBrake Activity Log ***required*** (see How-to get an activity log)

Code: Select all

Please replace this text with the contents of your log file between the two code tags - OR -  provide a pastebin URL in place of these 3 lines.

[Deleted User 11865]

The preset's constant quality of RF 22 assumes HD content, you could lower it to 20 (higher quality) or even as low as 18 to preserve more of the source detail. But DVDs are low resolution and don't do a good job of preserving fine grain, so the source is already rather bad to begin with.

[rollin_eng]

Could you please post your HB logs, instructions can be found here:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/hel ... y-log.html

[Woodstock]

Just to nit-pick, DVDs aren't 720p resolution. NTSC is 480p. And the typical viewing distance of a tablet puts you square in the zone where low-resolution content is obvious.

[Deleted User 13735]

It will always look grainy and low resolution. Upscaling doesn't help that. Normal preset at RF 20 is optimal for your source.

[mAurelius]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Sounds like what I expected. Can’t get anything better out of it. I guess they never expected people to watch that close to the screen when creating DVDs of that style back in the day.
Thanks for setting me straight on it being 480p NTSC. That makes sense.
I guess I’ll have to live with the quality it is.
Thank you for the quick, experienced advice from this great community!

[nhyone]

There are two things that can help: decomb and NLMeans.

Is it grain that gives the perception of low quality? If so, use NLMeans.