Handbrake most simple question

Handbrake uses highly compressive and lossy MPEG-4 codecs like H264.
Video DVDs use a highly compressive and lossy codec called MPEG-2.

As both codecs are lossy, you won't loose that much visible and noticeable visual information during the transcoding (conversion) anyway.

You can try to up the data rate to whatever fits the final size you wish to have and the length of the video.

But that will not give you more information, as there is not so much information there in the first place.

As MPEG-4 is more advanced than MPEG-2, you can get the same visual and qualitative results with less HDD space taken than with an MPEG-2 encoded video.

Example: 1GB of MPEG-4 encoded video of a 90 minute movie can have the same visual quality as the 6GB MPEG-2 encoded source.

Btw, MPEG-2 encoded video on a video DVD uses up to 8/9 Mbit/S as a data rate, that's 1MB/s, which is not much anyway.

 

That's impossible. MPEG2 to H.264/MPEG4 is a lossy transcode, so you will always lose quality, regardless of the setting. You cannot make things smaller while retaining the same quality using lossy encoders. If you don't want to lose any quality, just rip the movie straight from the DVD as is. Frontrow supports viewing ripped DVD folders. Other players do too (Apple's DVD player, VLC, XBMC, etc).

Now, losing quality doesn't mean bad. I ripped my DVDs and convert them to H.264 all the time. I simply use the Apple Universal preset, and the quality is great.

 

True enough. However, there is the scientifically quantifiable loss of quality and the visually perceivable loss of quality. Using good settings, a HandBrake rip will produce a movie file with no (or extremely little) perceivable loss in picture quality. The space savings are well worth the time it takes, IMHO.

 

from the handbrake faq:

If you want the same thing as the dvd,then just rip it with a dvdripper but don't convert it and you'll get the exact same thing.

 

You missed my second paragraph.