Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

randy98mtu

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 4, 2009
1,455
140
I just switched from 2592 to 2845. When I encode Blurays, I start from the ATV preset, change to 24 fps, 1280x whatever picture size and then let her rip. I see that the constant quality setting is still default at 60%. My latest encodes are now coming out at 1500 kbps, where I was getting close to 5000 before. Was there a change to the settings in the latest version? I would think for an HD encode, I would want the highest bitrate that the ATV can play, right? I bumped it to 65% for the last 2 I did and now I'm getting 2500 kbps. Has anyone else come across this? Are there new options in h.264 that make 1500 kbps the new 5000 kbps?

Thanks for any tips. Just want to make sure I'm still making good encodes. I haven't done any high action movies yet so I figure it doesn't matter much if I have a comedy at 2500 vs 5000 kbps...
 

tropic10

Cancelled
Sep 8, 2008
80
26
Mbtree was added to x264 between 2592 and 2845. It can significantly reduce the bitrate required while maintaining approximately the same quality as before. As long as you're satisfied with how it looks, there's no need bump up constant quality from 60%. You would just be wasting space.

On one of the animated bluray discs I transcoded at 1080p, my final file size was 3 GB at RF 19 (63%). I admittedly used a slow custom preset that took 8 hours with a quad core Q6600 so ymmv. And most people think that RF 19 is overkill for 1080P. But the final file size is still pretty amazing in my opinion.
 

randy98mtu

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 4, 2009
1,455
140
That's what I was wondering. Even at 65% (I think it was RF 17.5?) these came out to 2.5 gig. At 60% they were 1.5 gig. Previously everything was 3-5 gig. Thanks!
 

r3draid3r04

macrumors newbie
Oct 29, 2009
4
0
On one of the animated bluray discs I transcoded at 1080p, my final file size was 3 GB at RF 19 (63%). I admittedly used a slow custom preset that took 8 hours with a quad core Q6600 so ymmv. And most people think that RF 19 is overkill for 1080P. But the final file size is still pretty amazing in my opinion.

Would it be possible for you to send that preset my way?
 

NightStorm

macrumors 68000
Jan 26, 2006
1,860
66
Whitehouse, OH
Mbtree was added to x264 between 2592 and 2845. It can significantly reduce the bitrate required while maintaining approximately the same quality as before. As long as you're satisfied with how it looks, there's no need bump up constant quality from 60%. You would just be wasting space.

On one of the animated bluray discs I transcoded at 1080p, my final file size was 3 GB at RF 19 (63%). I admittedly used a slow custom preset that took 8 hours with a quad core Q6600 so ymmv. And most people think that RF 19 is overkill for 1080P. But the final file size is still pretty amazing in my opinion.

Higher quality sources don't need lower RF values... you can get away with using something higher than the AppleTV preset and not notice a decrease in output quality. That said, storage is cheap and I tend to use the same presets for everything just to simplify things.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.