1080p Handbrake settings for new Apple TV?

I tried converting a bluray rip in subler just to try it on the new ATV until HB releases their preset and subler keeps making 4k files that arent openable in anything. am I doing something wrong? I select the main movie file and then just select the main audio file.

chiefpavvy said:

It isn't the algorithm, it is the source material. Apple gets the studio masters which are much higher quality than even Blu-Ray disc (which is lossy to begin with) so they are able to create a file of higher quality at a lower overall bitrate and file size than anything you could do from Blu-Ray. And unless you have a "friend" who can feed you the studio masters you aren't going to do it.

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Thanks, I suspected as much. If only iTunes would drop the video DRM like they did with music, I might actually be inclined to buy from them!

I currently use an RF of 18 and usually get about 10-15gb movies and they play perfectly on the ATV3. The quality is incredible and my large files don't cause any trouble over my network (I connected via ethernet, which is essential for large blu ray movies) and the ATV3 handles the large files fairly gracefully (usually about 10-20 seconds of buffering).

I did my first bluray encode tonight. took the ATV2 setting changed it to 1080p.

selected web optimized and put

vbv-bufsize=31250:vbv-maxrate=25000

for advanced option string. resulted in a 2 hour movie at about 12gb. works great on the apple tv. i can see a little bit of artifacting tho so im anxiously awaiting the official preset.

Are DVD encodes about the same, I mean is the Apple 2 preset still good to use, or is there going to be a better output preset that anyone knows of.

jaysue said:

Are DVD encodes about the same, I mean is the Apple 2 preset still good to use,

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Of course. The atv 3 does not diminish the quality of the atv preset in hb.

jaysue said:

or is there going to be a better output preset that anyone knows of.

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.... maybe.

CrAkD said:

I did my first bluray encode tonight. took the ATV2 setting changed it to 1080p.

selected web optimized and put

vbv-bufsize=31250:vbv-maxrate=25000

for advanced option string. resulted in a 2 hour movie at about 12gb. works great on the apple tv. i can see a little bit of artifacting tho so im anxiously awaiting the official preset.

Click to expand...

I left out the advanced string. So far I do not see any artifacting. I'm streaming on 5ghz N. Even with current ATV capped at 65mbps its playing well and loading well ahead of the playback point.

CrAkD said:

I did my first bluray encode tonight. took the ATV2 setting changed it to 1080p.

selected web optimized and put

vbv-bufsize=31250:vbv-maxrate=25000

for advanced option string. resulted in a 2 hour movie at about 12gb. works great on the apple tv. i can see a little bit of artifacting tho so im anxiously awaiting the official preset.

Click to expand...

Can you further explain this for the n00bs here, please?!?

I don't see those options anywhere on Handbrake.

Thanks.

SteveFromNY said:

Can you further explain this for the n00bs here, please?!?

I don't see those options anywhere on Handbrake.

Thanks.

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first select the atv 2 preset then in the picture settings tab set it to 1920 x 1080 its kind of a pain in the neck to set it to that i had to mess with alot of the settings to get it to that. believe me im no pro at this either. then web optimized is right on the main window of handbrake and you can put the string in on the advanced tab down the bottom. one of the mods over at the handbrake forum suggested putting the string in thats why i did it i dont know what it does.

CrAkD said:

one of the mods over at the handbrake forum suggested putting the string in thats why i did it i dont know what it does.

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Regardless of widgets ... the string tells the x264 encoder what to do. The widgets only help you insert the parameters x264 wants to see in the string. That said ...

In the case of vbv what you are doing ( in a nutshell ) is putting a cap on the maximum bitrate over x amount of time. So, with constant quality where bitrate can go wild depending on the source ... etc. ... you are basically capping it to a predetermined amount. It can be very powerful for any limited streaming situation. As with all thing though ... there is a tradeoff :

If you hit the cap HandBrake will drop the bitrate so you *might* see a degradation of visual quality during the capped period since the cap prevents the encoder from providing what it wants to maintain the specified (rf value) of quality. As long as things are sane you really shouldn't see much if any of this in actual use. But, its worth noting.

Hopefully that helps rather than hinders the understanding of vbv (video buffer verifier) settings.

dynaflash said:

Regardless of widgets ... the string tells the x264 encoder what to do. The widgets only help you insert the parameters x264 wants to see in the string. That said ...

In the case of vbv what you are doing ( in a nutshell ) is putting a cap on the maximum bitrate over x amount of time. So, with constant quality where bitrate can go wild depending on the source ... etc. ... you are basically capping it to a predetermined amount. It can be very powerful for any limited streaming situation. As with all thing though ... there is a tradeoff :

If you hit the cap HandBrake will drop the bitrate so you *might* see a degradation of visual quality during the capped period since the cap prevents the encoder from providing what it wants to maintain the specified (rf value) of quality. As long as things are sane you really shouldn't see much if any of this in actual use. But, its worth noting.

Hopefully that helps rather than hinders the understanding of vbv (video buffer verifier) settings.

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Thanks for the clear explanation. I left it out on purposes because of that, but I was not sure how to explain it as articulately as you. Anyway, thats why I don't see any pixelation or artifacts even with the most demanding scenes.

kagharaht said:

Anyway, thats why I don't see any pixelation or artifacts even with the most demanding scenes.

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Well when its set right its awesome. One other note: beware the settings for vbv are very complex and may or may not do what you want depending how you set them. If its working for you ... I advise don't mess with it.

Have fun.

dynaflash said:

Regardless of widgets ... the string tells the x264 encoder what to do. The widgets only help you insert the parameters x264 wants to see in the string. That said ...

In the case of vbv what you are doing ( in a nutshell ) is putting a cap on the maximum bitrate over x amount of time. So, with constant quality where bitrate can go wild depending on the source ... etc. ... you are basically capping it to a predetermined amount. It can be very powerful for any limited streaming situation. As with all thing though ... there is a tradeoff :

If you hit the cap HandBrake will drop the bitrate so you *might* see a degradation of visual quality during the capped period since the cap prevents the encoder from providing what it wants to maintain the specified (rf value) of quality. As long as things are sane you really shouldn't see much if any of this in actual use. But, its worth noting.

Hopefully that helps rather than hinders the understanding of vbv (video buffer verifier) settings.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation! Makes perfect sense. How are the new presets coming?

CrAkD said:

Thanks for the explanation! Makes perfect sense. How are the new presets coming?

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Dunno just yet. I have mine as well as a few others but haven't yet thrown the kitchen sink at it. My general guess is you can use hb's High profile preset and get pretty much what you want. We will probably squeak some more out of it but some of that might come at the expense of much more encoding time with little quality/size benefit.

dynaflash said:

Well when its set right its awesome. One other note: beware the settings for vbv are very complex and may or may not do what you want depending how you set them. If its working for you ... I advise don't mess with it.

Have fun.

Click to expand...

Thank you!

Man, I was really hoping Handbrake would update their presets last night. I have 16 mkvs I want to start transcoding but would rather wait for their team to put out the best solution.

Anyone know of their eta? I just can't wait to watch Blade Runner in 1080p through my Apple TV 3.

Alright, so I tried to convert a movie or two with the suggested settings at the Handbrake forums, I also decided to do a 6 Channel AAC conversion with a DTS Passthrough to see if it could handle it.

So I ended up with a movie that's 7.38 GBs and a TV Show Episode that's 3.45 GBs. The movie took a while to buffer and that's with a wireless network. It didn't take hours, but just a minute or two, once it started playing, it played smoothly. The TV Show on the other hand, played almost immediately. The only difference with the TV Show conversion was that I didn't include the Advanced Option string. I have no idea if that really made a difference, but it looks like it might have.

As for the DTS, it looks like that Apple TV doesn't support it at all. There's no indication of it being played through my receiver, I really can't tell. I assumed that it would just pass the audio to my receiver and just let it handle it, but it doesn't seem to be able to do that at the moment. Either that, or I don't know how to do it.

knemonic said:

Man, I was really hoping Handbrake would update their presets last night. I have 16 mkvs I want to start transcoding but would rather wait for their team to put out the best solution.

Anyone know of their eta? I just can't wait to watch Blade Runner in 1080p through my Apple TV 3.

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Use the high profile preset if you're anxious to get started. I'd share my preset, but I haven't really tested it at 1080p yet (works beautifully at 720p though on the v2).

I've got a Studio Ghibli bluray on my hard drive currently, and plan on starting a 1080p encode before I leave for some St. Patrick's Day festivities later this afternoon. I'm now reconsidering my stance on having multiple encodes and may start making iPad-optimized versions IF I can get smooth playback of 1080p sources on my AppleTV v2 and v3. I really think Apple should just remove the Sofware restriction on transferring 108 files to the iPad 2.

NightStorm said:

Use the high profile preset if you're anxious to get started.

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I know But I just want the best, and i'm just being impatient. I assume their preset will get better quality out of an ATV3 designed preset than the high profile right? Even just a little better?

If not, then screw it. I will start transcoding now. That and Dark Knight are two things I can't wait to watch on my projection screen.

Also, I thought I read somewhere that the high profile doesn't work on all devices?

Thanks!

knemonic said:

I know But I just want the best, and i'm just being impatient. I assume their preset will get better quality out of an ATV3 designed preset than the high profile right? Even just a little better?

If not, then screw it. I will start transcoding now. That and Dark Knight are two things I can't wait to watch on my projection screen.

Also, I thought I read somewhere that the high profile doesn't work on all devices?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Advanced x264 options will get your better compression, less impact on quality. Do a couple tests changing the RF value and see what works for you (Ive used 20 since we worked on the original presets) as I liked the quality it gave versus the size of the file... I like to have one encode for all of my devices and while I have 8TB of storage for my iTunes library, I'm limited on my iPad and iPhone.

High profile will have issues on older devices, but works fine with iPhone 4 and later, iPad, and AppleTV v2.

NightStorm said:

Advanced x264 options will get your better compression, less impact on quality. Do a couple tests changing the RF value and see what works for you (Ive used 20 since we worked on the original presets) as I liked the quality it gave versus the size of the file... I like to have one encode for all of my devices and while I have 8TB of storage for my iTunes library, I'm limited on my iPad and iPhone.

High profile will have issues on older devices, but works fine with iPhone 4 and later, iPad, and AppleTV v2.

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I am more concerned about quality since I use Plex and Stream To Me to watch movies and TV shows on my iPad when out an about and rarely watch them but at home (where the quality counts). The only drawback to that is if I am not on wifi. Usually when I want to watch movies on the road, I am at other peoples apartments and we want to watch a movie, so I plug in my iPhone into their tv with the composite cable (cause it is the most compatible). Almost always they have good Wifi. Also, its great cause I always have my entire library to watch wherever I go.

It would be great if Apple could implement a feature, though I know it would be slow but it downscales videos when you transfer them to your iPad or iPhone, to save on space. I know their solution is to give you three quality versions now if you buy it from their store, but that still takes up a lot of space on your externals, even if you have 8tb (tv shows particularly are bad). Maybe this is something they are thinking about, since there was that article about a variable audio codec, which goes up to HD sound and down based on your connection/device.

I am going to sift through some of the recent posts and try what other peps settings are.

Thanks!

Curious what computer everyone has and what kind of encoding times you are getting with 1080P. I have several going right now on my Mac Mini so I'll update when I get a time.

A question about the presets if I may. I would have thought "Same as source" would make more sense for Framerate (FPS) than forcing them all to "29.97 (NTSC Video)". Why is converting something that might be 25fps to 29.97fps a good thing?

CrAkD said:

first select the atv 2 preset then in the picture settings tab set it to 1920 x 1080 its kind of a pain in the neck to set it to that i had to mess with alot of the settings to get it to that. believe me im no pro at this either. then web optimized is right on the main window of handbrake and you can put the string in on the advanced tab down the bottom. one of the mods over at the handbrake forum suggested putting the string in thats why i did it i dont know what it does.

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Thanks for the response, it worked great. It took FOREVER, though, like 4 hours. Not looking forward to re-encoding all my movies but, oh well...

ATJ777 said:

A question about the presets if I may. I would have thought "Same as source" would make more sense for Framerate (FPS) than forcing them all to "29.97 (NTSC Video)". Why is converting something that might be 25fps to 29.97fps a good thing?

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If "Peak Framerate (VFR)" is checked, it is telling Handbrake to go no higher than 29.97 frames per second, the maximum allowed on the AppleTV. If the source is all 25fps, it will remain 25fps.