Changing Bitrate Settings

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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JustBeingBre
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Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:05 pm

Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by JustBeingBre »

Hello, I am confused as to where I can change bitrate settings. I see that there are areas where bitrate can be affected but I need to set bitrate to a specific numerical value in order to play upload a video to my player. :

HandBrake version (e.g., 1.3.0):

MacBook Pro OS 10.15.1


No activity log because I haven't yet done anything.
Woodstock
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by Woodstock »

Select Video tab. Select "peak" or "avg". Type in bit rate in kbps.
Deleted User 11865

Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

Woodstock wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:02 pm Select Video tab. Select "peak"
Someone is confusing bit rate and frame rate options ;)
mduell
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by mduell »

Yea, peak bitrate is controlled via the vbv encoder options.
NeghVar
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by NeghVar »

my scenario here is that I have 1080p color surveillance video that has a kbps of anywhere from 10000 to 15000. Ridiculous!
I need eveything the same (codec, res, fps, etc) accept the kbps reduced to 1000. Where do I set that?

I apologize if this is seen as necroing
Woodstock
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by Woodstock »

To move the bit rate that radically, SOMETHING has to be given up. If there is not much motion involved, it might be possible, but the more different each frame, the higher bit rate necessary to convey the information.

My cheap Chinese bullet cams can have the bit rate, frame rate, and resolution adjusted to cover a wide variety of scenarios. On the ones where bit rate is an issue, I cut the frame rate back to 10 fps. Why not start with the camera settings?
mduell
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by mduell »

Eh, a lot of them are just cheap and lousy encoders.

I'd start with the 1080p Fast preset, and maybe adjust the encoder preset a bit slower. See what that gets you on typical footage.
Deleted User 13735

Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by Deleted User 13735 »

my scenario here is that I have 1080p color surveillance video that has a kbps of anywhere from 10000 to 15000. Ridiculous!
No, that is not ridiculous. It is fairly conservative VBR.

Sounds like you are asking for Constant Bit Rate, which is completely impractical for streaming, but oh well.

The closest you will come in Handbrake is to choose Average Bit Rate and specify your target value (plus about 20%). Then, in Extra Settings, specify vbv-maxrate at the same as your Average, and specify vbv-bufsize at half of your maxrate, but no lower!

Keep in mind these numbers are seriously pushing the envelope, so if visible artifacting occurs, back off some. Setting bufsize the same as the other two still gives really good bandwidth compression and uniformity.
This is what you can expect:
CBR.png
CBR.png (59.37 KiB) Viewed 278 times
NeghVar
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Joined: Sun Sep 20, 2020 9:00 pm

Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by NeghVar »

Whether ridiculous or not, video export from the DVR is set to 1024 kbps @ 1080p. Multiple export attempts kept coming out at unusual sizes. According to MediaInfo the exports ranged from 10556 to 15678. Anyway, I ran it through handbrake with avg. bitrate of 1024. It came out fine. The difference in quality is noticeable compared to the 10000kbps but indistinguishable from other video exports from other DVRs with the same settings.
So thanks for the info.
rollin_eng
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by rollin_eng »

NeghVar wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 9:07 pm my scenario here is that I have 1080p color surveillance video that has a kbps of anywhere from 10000 to 15000. Ridiculous!
I need eveything the same (codec, res, fps, etc) accept the kbps reduced to 1000. Where do I set that?

I apologize if this is seen as necroing
Just select 2 pass encoding and set the bitrate to 1000 on the video tab.
Sigward003
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Joined: Tue Sep 15, 2020 5:49 am

Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by Sigward003 »

Will a well compressed, better effenciency codec adapted video(like AV1) with lower bitrate, competent to a comparatively good graphic presentation?
mduell
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Re: Changing Bitrate Settings

Post by mduell »

In some circumstances, sure.

H.265 only beats H.264 for very low bitrates or 4K+ frame sizes. For high quality 1080 encodes, there's very little upside (but still a huge performance hit).
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