Well, here my hi-setting for films from cable, but also dvd.
This is an updated version of my setting from january 2008.
Most switches are pretty close to the default crf-preset.
Settings for
Mac GUI (Handbrake 0.9.3 rev. 2111)
Source material: (progressive)
mpg, DVDs.
Priorities: Good quality and compact file size. Not for iPod and similar divices
Video
Format:
mkv
Codecs:
AVC/H.264 Video / AAC Audio
HTTP Optimized MP4:
off
Framerate:
Same as source
Encoder:
x264 (h.264 Main)
Constant quality: CRF
53–59%, mostly
54–56%
Grayscale:
off;
on for most b/w movies
Picture Settings
Size:
anamorphic loose
Crop:
Automatic (or
Custom, if
Automatic fails)
Filters:
Detelecine:
on
Decomb:
on
Deinterlace:
off
Denoise: depending on the content (mostly
Weak or
None (DVD), rarely
Medium)
Deblock:
off – Deblocking seems to have positive effect on heavily compressed mpeg, but it’s painfully slow. Considering the given low quality of heavy compressed source material, it’s rarely worth the time.
Audio & Subtitles
Audio Tracks: depends
Audio Quality:
Bitrate:
96–128, mostly
112
Sample rate:
48
Dynamic Range Compression: (mostly)
1.00-2.00
Subtitles: depends
Advanced
Reference Frames:
5
Mixed References:
on
B-Frames:
5
Direct Prediction:
Spatial
Weighted B-Frames:
on
Pyramidal B-Frames:
on
Motion Estimation Method:
Uneven Multi-Hexagon
Motion Estimation Range:
32 to
16
Subpixel Motion Estimation:
9
Analysis:
All
8x8 DCT:
on
Deblocking:
-2, -1, up to
0,0 depending on the film
Trellis:
2 - I know, some people said, trellis 2 is no good for CRF at all, but I found no proofs for this so far; it seems to be required for psy-trellis (see below).
No Fast-P-Skip:
off
No DCT-Decimate:
off
CABAC Entropy Encoding:
on
Additional switches I use:
b-adapt=2; I think this algorithm is better. To verify.
psy-rd=1,1 (experimenting with
1,0.2,
1,0.1); attention with this: according to
some sources psy-trellis (the 2nd
1) requires
trellis 2. So, if you are using
trellis 1 it may be better to turn off psy-trellis (
psy-rd=1,0). To verify.
To avoid unnecessary (small) speed losses you can add:
no-ssim=1 and
no-psnr=1
Some comments:
Encoding speed 8–13 fps on a MBP 2.4GHz (down to 3-4 fps on my old MacBook ...).
The
quality factor I choose depends on the film, the noisiness, and other factors: 53-56% in general; 55-59% for higher quality films to archive. 55% is a good compromise when I'm undecided.
Also don’t forget to denoise your TV-stuff (cable etc.). With "weak"often you wont loose much on quality but gain a lot on smaller file size.
Trellis: For higher encoding speed you may set
Trellis to
Trellis 1 (but see above
psy-trellis).
BTW:
A reliable (and more or less up to date)
info source for x 264 seems to be:
http://www.avidemux.org/admWiki/index.php?title=H264
If you told HB to make
individual logs for each encoding (Preferences), you can attach them directly to your mkv output files with
mkvmerge. This comes in handy later when you’re wondering with which settings and bitrate you have encoded the film. To extract the attached file you can use
mkvinfo and
mkvextract or - the quick way - to read it just throw the whole file on a (fast) text- or hex editor (
0xED comes to mind).
Thanks to all the HB-developers for this great tool!
Last edit 2009-02-03
So I am looking for some suggestions on settings to use. I am after quality and file size mainly. I don't care on the speed, I usually just run it over night while I am sleeping. I tried the modified nightstrm settings based off the Universal preset. the quaility was good but not as good as the generic film preset. I used Dark Knight as my source. Universal preset gave a file of 2.3 gb where the file was 2.4. So they are both very close to a good size for me. I noticed on the Universal setting the sky seemed to look a bit worse than the film. Wasn't a smooth render I guess is the best way to say it. Any suggestions on the best settings for this?