Most of my BR's are around 10GB. I think 5GB is a very optimistic estimate for a BR. Most of my regular dvd's are around 1GB.
First off, I think something is wrong if it's taking 56 hours. I have a 2009 duo core (so we're talking old) MBP. I transcoded the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring EE, combining both BR's from the set into single mkv and it took a little over 24 hours to transcode to mp4 using Handbrake. You are using MakeMKV to generate the mkv that HB transcodes, right?
Maybe I don't understand your question, but the aTV3 preset (and I thought the atV2 preset as well) will automatically include the 5.1 audio track, if there is one. It will also downmix the 5.1 to a Dolby Prologic stereo track and include it in the mp4.
Correct, in fact all of the ATV presets (even atv 1) and also the Apple Universal preset use the same audio track layout. 1. 2 channel aac dpl2 and 2. AC3 5.1
Thanks, maybe I knew that. Another question: if there's 2 soundtracks in the file how do I select? On my BD player there's a menu page with the option (5.1 or stereo). But running the file from iTunes there's no way to choose. Does my AVR automatically pick the 5.1 track if there are 2 on there?
There's a lot of good advice in this thread so I'll offer just a few comments that haven't been said...
OP, aiming for a target file size is not really a great way to think about preserving video quality. In video compression, it's not so much the size of the file but the quality of the compressor. For example, I shoot a lot of AVCHD 1080p with a camcorder. A AVHHD video clip might be 1GB. However, I can convert it to prores and it might become 10GB. Is the picture quality 10X better in the latter? No, it's just the same.
You are correct in thinking about quality over minimizing file size however. And with this in mind, I would suggest using the HB "high profile" setting which is a little slower than theTV3 preset because it is doing a few extra things to retain quality at an even smaller file size.
I'm a bit of a max quality chaser myself, so I choose "high profile" and slide the CQ to 19 (from the default of 20). It's probably visual overkill (I'm not sure I can see the difference of 20 vs. 19) but the net file size difference is not enough to make me worry about the possible waste. End result, MKV files sizes of 25-35GB might be shrunk to 5-15GB. It's hard to see any difference from original to this version (for my eyes).
If maintaining the exact same quality as the BD is important, you have to keep the video portion of the file size "as is" and only downconverting the audio to DD. Then a 35GB MKV might be shrunk to only 32-33GB in the
In my experience though, Handbrake, High Profile, CQ=19 is an excellent default choice for the vast majority of conversions. File sizes are shrunk to about 25% of the original (but varies widely film to film) and quality seems to be just about the same.
TV3. The Handbrake guys say the latter is basically HP with some tweaks. From what I've read from others, there is a belief that TV3 profile finishes a little faster than the HP head-to-head but I haven't verified that myself.As far as the encoder options, its HP without the rc-lookahead (which in testing took more cpu cycles and yielded no visual quality benefit).
Er, why ? It has no affect on the final file size. But does create a 64 bit mp4 which means it *can* be over 4GB. If you untick it and the mp4 is going to be over 4GB it will break the file upon muxing.
The Dark Knight you say?
Well unless I'm mistaken that movie is a lot longer than the 90 minute (1 1/2 hour) movie the other poster was commenting on... The Dark Knight is over 2 and 1/2 hours I think. ( 1 hour longer ) that should explain the larger file size you saw.
I remember because I just rewatched TDK and I commented about two hours in... 'Man this is a long movie'
Edit after rereading the post he did say the average file size after ripping 105 movies from 1.5 to 3 hours ...but I'd be willing to bet that a very large majority of those 105 were under 2 hours.
) from 6.5GB to 1.2GB. Excellent quality via the Western Digital Live TV.