Handbrake - Constant Quality Setting

MowingDevil said:

On most presets the "constant quality setting" seems to be around 67%. Just wondering what people are setting that to or are you leaving it alone? I've been experimenting w/ different settings & presets, now I'm going to try it at 100% and see if that actually improves the picture quality any or if it simply makes a larger file w/ no noticeable improvement.

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Really don't!

100% is just stupid and will give you files far, far bigger than the DVD.

62% is considered high quality, if I were you I'd start by (honestly) checking with yourself if you can see the difference between say 60% and 62% and then work upwards from there.

wysinawyg said:

Really don't!

100% is just stupid and will give you files far, far bigger than the DVD.

62% is considered high quality, if I were you I'd start by (honestly) checking with yourself if you can see the difference between say 60% and 62% and then work upwards from there.

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What he said! Don't think of the constant quality setting as a percentage of the original DVD's quality--it's not. I'd suggest reading through the Handbrake wiki to get a better understanding of how it works, starting here.

MowingDevil said:

Good to know...ya I assumed 100% pretty much meant full quality of the disc or close to it.

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i made that same mistake before. i learned quickly that not only did it increase the size to way bigger than the original like someone already mentioned, but the quality actually looks worse along with taking WAY too long to encode.

personally, i leave it at constant quality, but i want something compatible with my iphone, yet looks decent on my 15" mbp. i select iphone/ipod preset, but bump up the resolution to the original dvd resolution (usually 720 by something between 350 and 480, i leave the original aspect ratio intact) and i make sure to add :level=30 to the advanced video setting to keep the h.264 profile at 3.0. otherwise, i've had encodings come out with 3.1 or even 4.0 profile which aren't compatible on the 3gs iphone. all this seems to give me a file that is typically small in size still (most less than 1gb), are compatible with my iphone and also look decent in fullscreen mode on my laptop.

yea no dont do 100% quality lol. it gave me a ~35GB file.

~62% is fine normally, i do 65% cuz im t3h fussy™

From the HandBrake FAQ ... http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/SupportFAQ#winsomelosesome

good ol search function to the rescue

thanks for the input


what average bitrate (kbps)? default shows 700 (grayed out unless selected)


off to read the wiki links ..............


btw: I'm converting Blu-ray rips that are 1920x1080

danpass said:

good ol search function to the rescue

thanks for the input


what average bitrate (kbps)? default shows 700 (grayed out unless selected)


off to read the wiki links ..............


btw: I'm converting Blu-ray rips that are 1920x1080

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What ever you want really. Try 5000kbps and see how that goes haha. If it is greed out then it me and that you have constant quality selected, you don't get to choose the bit rate there (it does it itself).

Ok I tried two conversions:

Constant Quality which defaults at 60.78% and 700 kbps

Then an override of 3500 kbps.


There is better contrast and detail with 3500 kbps, near HD, and therefore good enough for an iPad. The catch is that the file becomes ~3 times larger.

Has anyone tried a minimum bitrate that they're satisfied with?


on a sidenote I see how the default, 60%, is good enough when using a standard DVD source.

danpass said:

Ok I tried two conversions:

Constant Quality which defaults at 60.78% and 700 kbps

Then an override of 3500 kbps.

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im sorry, you must have missed my previous post's point. you can do constant quality OR bitrate OR target size. if you choose a CBR (constant bitrate) of 60.68%, then select the radio button for average bitrate of 3500kbps, it will encode at 3500 and completely disregard the 60.78% CBR previousy chosen.

Has anyone tried a minimum bitrate that they're satisfied with?

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personally i like ~4000kbps for DVD and >10000kbps for BDs, but this is for playback on TVs. on an ipad i think 2048kbps would be plenty for both dvd and BD.

. Actually I already knew it was one or the other.

I'll give 2048 a shot once the 3G arrives.

danpass said:

. Actually I already knew it was one or the other.

I'll give 2048 a shot once the 3G arrives.

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hahaha just making sure

post some shots of the convert movie when its done to see how it looks

DoFoT9 said:

personally i like ~4000kbps for DVD and >10000kbps for BDs, but this is for playback on TVs. on an ipad i think 2048kbps would be plenty for both dvd and BD.

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4000 kbps abr for dvd's ??? Holy cow that is almost source bitrate. I would suggest sticking to constant quality encoding as its much more efficient and ultimately produces a better result than abr ... puts bits where needed and doesn't use them if it doesn't need to (still uncomplicated scenes). Just my .02 .

DoFoT9 said:

personally i like ~4000kbps for DVD.

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4000kbps for a SD DVD source Wow that seems very high. My DVD encodes are between 1700-2300kbps using CQ mode and on my 42" TV I can't see a difference with the original DVD. But as long as your happy with them.

dynaflash said:

4000 kbps abr for dvd's ??? Holy cow that is almost source bitrate. I would suggest sticking to constant quality encoding as its much more efficient and ultimately produces a better result than abr ... puts bits where needed and doesn't use them if it doesn't need to (still uncomplicated scenes). Just my .02 .

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roidy said:

4000kbps for a SD DVD source Wow that seems very high. My DVD encodes are between 1700-2300kbps using CQ mode and on my 42" TV I can't see a difference with the original DVD. But as long as your happy with them.

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fair enugh. each to his own. personally i rip all of my BDs/DVDs and when i want to play them on iPad i will rip at those rates specified. i am what you would call OCD i guess (get it from my dad lol).

Using average bit rate is pretty much pointless unless you care about exceeding a certain bit rate at any point throughout the movie (e.g., if you can only stream or playback a certain rate). Constant quality makes much better use of space (I use about 63.25% CQ).