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Official Handbrake Settings

S

supergod

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 14, 2004
439
0
Toronto
I thought it might be useful to create a single thread to discuss the settings that have worked best for ripping DVDs using handbrake.

I am experimenting, trying to find the best way to rip my DVDs onto my iMac so I can then watch them all in front row. I've got Toast 9 which lets you watch DivX files in quicktime (which is awesome, by the way) so it gives more options in terms of formats to rip in to.

Some of my results thus far: I got about 24fps average ripping the animated Metropolis in H.264 at 800kbps and AAC at 128kbps with image interlacing at a resolution of 720*480. I realized after ripping it that in that aspect ratio, it would have bars on the sides of my screen so I am now going to try ripping it again.

I ripped Charlie and the Chocolate factory at around the same settings with a much slower overall fps (around 10 or so). I don't know why there was such a difference. These speeds are the result of running the app with no other software running at all (nor background apps) on the highest power setting with the app minimized and the display turned off.

Anyways, those are my experiences so far. I'm trying to find the best setting for speed of the rip, file size and (most importantly) fidelity and quality.

If anybody has any tips, post here (along with benchmarks etc.)
 
supergod said:
I thought it might be useful to create a single thread to discuss the settings that have worked best for ripping DVDs using handbrake.

I am experimenting, trying to find the best way to rip my DVDs onto my iMac so I can then watch them all in front row. I've got Toast 9 which lets you watch DivX files in quicktime (which is awesome, by the way) so it gives more options in terms of formats to rip in to.

Some of my results thus far: I got about 24fps average ripping the animated Metropolis in H.264 at 800kbps and AAC at 128kbps with image interlacing at a resolution of 720*480. I realized after ripping it that in that aspect ratio, it would have bars on the sides of my screen so I am now going to try ripping it again.

I ripped Charlie and the Chocolate factory at around the same settings with a much slower overall fps (around 10 or so). I don't know why there was such a difference. These speeds are the result of running the app with no other software running at all (nor background apps) on the highest power setting with the app minimized and the display turned off.

Anyways, those are my experiences so far. I'm trying to find the best setting for speed of the rip, file size and (most importantly) fidelity and quality.

If anybody has any tips, post here (along with benchmarks etc.)
Click to expand...

oooh!

I am also very interested in knowing the best approach here.

I have not purchased QT Pro, so I mistakenly used the H.264 codec and I now have to watch my movies in a "player" style mode.

Of course, if my powerbook had frontrow, I would be able to watch it in full screen mode... :(

come on apple...release front-row for the rest of us!!!!
 
Even better. Not just release front row for all systems: fix it for the ones it's on! I have a feeling we're not going to get a really useable frontrow until the 10.5
 
As a test, I ripped the same half hour episode in both regular mp4 and in H264. Both at a target size of 200mb, both with 160 kbps audio. The mp4 took 15 minutes on a dual 2.3 G5, while the H.264 took 45 minutes. (3x longer!) I then opened them both up and played them back side by side. I really assumed that the quality on the H.264 would be a lot better since they are both the same file size- but no. The difference was 99% undiscernable.

My advice is to skip H.264 altogether at this point. Save yourself some time and effort.
 
qtip919 said:
oooh!

I am also very interested in knowing the best approach here.

I have not purchased QT Pro, so I mistakenly used the H.264 codec and I now have to watch my movies in a "player" style mode.

Of course, if my powerbook had frontrow, I would be able to watch it in full screen mode... :(

come on apple...release front-row for the rest of us!!!!
Click to expand...

Will H.264 not play back in VLC player?
 
decksnap said:
As a test, I ripped the same half hour episode in both regular mp4 and in H264. Both at a target size of 200mb, both with 160 kbps audio. The mp4 took 15 minutes on a dual 2.3 G5, while the H.264 took 45 minutes. (3x longer!) I then opened them both up and played them back side by side. I really assumed that the quality on the H.264 would be a lot better since they are both the same file size- but no. The difference was 99% undiscernable.

My advice is to skip H.264 altogether at this point. Save yourself some time and effort.
Click to expand...
Did you try playing them back in full screen. In my experience H.264 does significantly better with upscaling the video than other codecs. Also, if you want to compress something very small, H.264 won hands down in my tests.

I did a test on a 6 min movie form DV to MPEG-4 for dialup settings and then similar settings with H.264. The files were 1.8 MB when finished, but you couldn't really see much on the MPEG-4. The H.264 was still nearly perfect though. My point is that for low compressions it may not be that much better, but there are places where it absolutely blows the competition away.
 
Yes, good point. And I've actually been converting these into H264 when I downsize them for my iPod. I think though, for full-size video, regular MP4 is a good choice.

And I did actually try them at double size- still almost no difference at all.
 
I usually rip my DVDs with MacTheRipper (main feature extraction mode) and then use Handbrake to do a 2-pass VBR 1000 kbps MPEG-4 encode. It takes my dual 2.0 g5 about 1.5 hours per movie (~1 gig file). I haven't messed around with H.264 yet since I don't want to buy a new QT Pro license.
 
The setting I'm trying out now is using regular Mpeg4, using the Xvid encoder at average bitrate of 800kbps, 2-pass encoding. The resulting product looks great for the most part. The differences I do notice are somewhat dulled colours and sharpness. I can't see any artifacts or bad edges or motion problems though, which is a relief. I'm still also keeping the audio at 128kbps AAC, but since I'm watching these on my iMac with the built in speakers, it's not much of a difference that can be heard.

I really can't wait until Apple really adresses the problem of movies. With the system in place, it's near impossible to rip DVDs with any efficiency and consistency and speediness. I refuse to pay their ridiculously high price for iTunes files ($10.00 for a 128kbps AAC album versus $2.00 for the same album at 320kbps AAC from allofmp3.com) but I would certainly pay the premium for a high quality H.264 video file that was well compressed and available for download. Until then, I'm going to keep trying different ways of ripping DVDs.
 
kgarner said:
I did a test on a 6 min movie form DV to MPEG-4 for dialup settings and then similar settings with H.264. The files were 1.8 MB when finished, but you couldn't really see much on the MPEG-4. The H.264 was still nearly perfect though. My point is that for low compressions it may not be that much better, but there are places where it absolutely blows the competition away.
Click to expand...

I tried to duplicate your test (DV -> H.264), since it would help me with a project I have, but I can't get Handbrake to recognize the DV file. I get a message saying no valid title was found, and I can't get past that. The DV file comes from iMovie directly. What am I missing/what step have I forgotten?

Thanks.
 
did you know that allofmp3.com is illegal? artists don't see any money, that's why it can be so cheap

supergod said:
I really can't wait until Apple really adresses the problem of movies. With the system in place, it's near impossible to rip DVDs with any efficiency and consistency and speediness. I refuse to pay their ridiculously high price for iTunes files ($10.00 for a 128kbps AAC album versus $2.00 for the same album at 320kbps AAC from allofmp3.com) but I would certainly pay the premium for a high quality H.264 video file that was well compressed and available for download. Until then, I'm going to keep trying different ways of ripping DVDs.
Click to expand...
 
can any one ask me this??

why does handbrake speeds change. sometimes i can encode at 80fps, and sometimes it will be 30fps. this is all using exactly the same sizes, bitrates etcetc. but with a different dvd. im just curious, could it be that the original format of the disks are different thus having to use different ways to encode?
 
DoFoT9 said:
can any one ask me this??

why does handbrake speeds change. sometimes i can encode at 80fps, and sometimes it will be 30fps. this is all using exactly the same sizes, bitrates etcetc. but with a different dvd. im just curious, could it be that the original format of the disks are different thus having to use different ways to encode?
Click to expand...

some movies are easier to compress than others, it's dependent on the complexity of each frame.

imagine a movie like... Howel's Castle, an anime movie, larger areas of similar colour, something like this is easier to compress than a movie such as Mission Impossible where there's heaps of movement and lots of stuff on the screen at the same time.
Computer's gotta work out how to do it somehow, takes time
 
peedub said:
some movies are easier to compress than others, it's dependent on the complexity of each frame.

imagine a movie like... Howel's Castle, an anime movie, larger areas of similar colour, something like this is easier to compress than a movie such as Mission Impossible where there's heaps of movement and lots of stuff on the screen at the same time.
Computer's gotta work out how to do it somehow, takes time
Click to expand...

aahhh ok i suppose that would make sense then. but a 200% slow down?? surely those movies arent 200% worser.

besides, all movies are encoded onto the dvd the same regardless of their quality.
 
So, what settings do I use for Best overall quality of picture and sound? I don't care how large the file is.

Should I use Xvid?
 
fishcube said:
So, what settings do I use for Best overall quality of picture and sound? I don't care how large the file is.

Should I use Xvid?
Click to expand...

definetely not xvid!!!!

use h.264!! just set the quality slider to 100%, and do an audio passthrough. that will make it pretty much identical to the original, except it will be in a different format :)
 
fishcube said:
At those settings, the movie ended up 19.3GB ? huh?

and why ac3 audio? better?
Click to expand...

lol you said you didnt carea about file size! i just provided the best option for what you wanted.

try something like 68% constant quality, that is normally about the quality of a DVD.

ac3 is a format being used in the new BD, it allows for very high quality sounds and bitrates, much better then mp3 and all the like.
 
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