Handbrake vs Toast 10 Ti for compressing Video_TS-NEED HELP

[brobro]

Hi everyone and anyone, so firstly-new to this forum way of life as I couldn't search for what I needed on Google so any answers that help me may hopefully help others too.

Bottom line - I would like to make good quality compressions of Video_TS folders to use in itunes/quicktime/common apple hardware (for the future purchases of say apple t.v, ipods and so on). When I say good quality I am after HD 1920x1080 - I recently got a 23" Cinema HD Display.

In the past - I have compressed using Handbrake and used H.264 but output doesn't seem to go past 720x432 in res? - which when played back on 1920x1080 can be real choppy. I still like HB, I just can't seem to find a way to make it do what I need.

Is toast more ideal? - So I just checked out the Convert section of Toast and found that it has a whole lot of output settings including HDV, nice scrn res settings and so on. Anyone had a play with this and found a good setting to use as a starting point before I batch compress for my library?


In a nutshell this is what I would much like to achieve in compression for a typical Video_TS - MTR imported movie.

1) Ideal output for scrn res and quality to be HD 1920x1080

2) Ideal output size 1-1.5GB if possible, pref no more than 1 GB.

3) Itunes/QT etc friendly format.

4) Have the option for audio format as Digital 5.1 channel

5) Some good settings to use in Toast if I need to even head in that direction.

6) Enjoy a cold brew in between compressions!

If anyone has had any luck or knowledge for what I am trying to achieve I would love to hear your story.

Cheers

brobro

~I just have a macbook...its all I need~

 

[ProfMonnitoff]

You want 1920x1080 at 1GB? That's impossible. Even at good compression, a movie at that resolution ends up at about 8-10 GB. Also, what is your source material? A DVD? If so, Handbrake is encoding at 720x### because that's what the resolution of DVD movies is.

Watching a DVD quality movie on an HD monitor won't look any worse than watching it on a non-HD monitor.

 

[brobro]

You want 1920x1080 at 1GB? That's impossible. Even at good compression, a movie at that resolution ends up at about 8-10 GB. Also, what is your source material? A DVD? If so, Handbrake is encoding at 720x### because that's what the resolution of DVD movies is.

Watching a DVD quality movie on an HD monitor won't look any worse than watching it on a non-HD monitor.

Wow that is huge, I thought that could be the case, this doesn't really help though. The source material is Video_TS which is from a commercial DVD. You say that Handbrake can only encode 720x### because thats the DVD res then how come Toast has the option of encoding at 1920x#### and actually looks and plays really good? Surely there is info in there that it's extracting for 1920x####?

If Handbrake is the only way to encode for the size I'm after then how do I get the most out of res quality (settings wise) for what I am trying to achieve. Or is this as far as res will go? It's the noise that really annoys me, the fact that I can download and watch itunes trailers as good as my compressions really gets me.

My last 2cents, brobro.

 

[ProfMonnitoff]

A DVD only has information for 720x540 or thereabout (depends on aspect ratio, etc. - but the 720 width is generally constant)

If Toast can "rip" it to 1920, all it's doing is taking the 720px video and stretching it to 1920 using some software algorithm. It's the same as opening a 720px picture and viewing it fullscreen on a HD monitor - you can't create information where there isn't any.

If Toast at 1920x1080 looks better than Handbrake at 720, Toast probably has a better algorithm (this is why upconverting DVD players create better pictures than regular DVD players), higher bitrate, something along those lines. But Toast will probably also look better at 720 than Handbrake at 720 then because there is no magical way to add those extra 1200 pixels worth of information once it's been stripped to squeeze the movie onto a DVD.

Long story short, rip DVDs at DVD resolution. Any lower and you're losing quality. Any higher and you're adding file size without gaining quality.


However, resolution is far from everything. Different codecs, bitrates, etc. at the same resolution will produce different pictures. The 720p movie you stream from iTunes has less information per second than a 720p movie on a BluRay.

This is really nerdy stuff because medium, codec, resolution, bandwidth, algorithm, etc. are all separate variables and it gets quite complicated.


For your case though, I'd recommend just trying differend bitrates at 720x### and seeing when increasing the bandwidth stops improving the picture quality. It's probably somewhere around 1-1.5GB per movie.