Hey guys, I'm backing up my Bluray edition of The Wire, compressing the episodes down to a more reasonable size with Handbrake. It's all going fine except for one episode which 'compresses' down to an 18 MB file which obviously can't be read. The rest go down to ~500 MB from the ~10GB MKV file I get for each episode. The MKV itself works fine. Is anyone able to give me some advice? Thanks in advance!
Hi Adam, The only things I've changed from default are: x264 Preset: Placebo x264 Tune: Film Avg Bitrate: 1000 (maybe a bit low for 1080p, but I'm happy with it) 2 Pass encoding Yes, I'm using H264. I haven't tried H265 recently, but it seemed to 'judder' last time I used it.
ooo god dont use placebo - slower should suffice and will be barely any different. personally i use a variable bit rate with a CQ of 17 for DVD 480p source and 20 for 1080p Are you concerned around file size? try tweaking a few setting and encoding the same file
I believe I had this issue once. I believe I may have used MKVMerge to rip out the separate tracks and then remake the MKV. Or possibly tried a different build of handbrake. It was a while back... I'd also mirror what Adam said, give CQ a shot instead of average as it 'should' give better results. Since I generally can't tell much of a difference my 720p/1080p encodes are done with a CQ of 23.25, though I do drop that down a bit if I think it doesn't look all that. But I don't think I've ever dropped below 22. Also, I'm still using handbrake version 10.2, last update i took a look at removed AAC FDK which is supposed to give better results than the other ones. Also worth noting, every time I've tested slower encode speeds they've actually increased file size. Again I don't really notice anything different either. I generally stick to 'very fast', though that's also in part to do with the fact I'm on an i5 750.
H.265 could be good a option if file size is a concern. Its not quite as good quality wise as H.264 on the same CQ settings but the file size would be around 20-30% smaller. The only issue is H.265 is brutal to encode taking nearly twice as long as H.264. As for you issues id definitely give CQ a go as it should give far better results. The problem with constant bit rate is that high action and complex scenes would have a noticeable drop in quality while still and simple scenes are overkill. Even handbrake dont recommend using constant bit rate https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/AvgBitrateAndTargetSize
you set it at avg bitrate of 1000 though, that isn't variable technically that will force handbrake to try and stick as close as possible to 1000kb/s sorry thats what i meant by constant bitrate. Have a go with the constant quality and if file size is a concern the best suggestion i can give is play around with the slider. Encode 1 chapter over and over again on different CQ values and see which one you are comfortable with. as i said 1080p content is usually preferred at 23 (personally mines at 20) the higher the value the more compressed it will be but the lower the quality. Its not a linear scale though so the increments and quality drop will be wider the higher between values you go. i.e. the change from 20-21 isnt as much as the change from 25-26. the speed bar uses various sets of clever algorithms to compress without losing the CQ value you entered (that determines the quality and basic file size). Faster encodes will produce large file sizes than slower encodes at the same CQ setting. its recommended you put it as slow as you can stand it but obviously its a diminishing return so there will be very little difference between placebo and slower as you try to squeeze that last couple of MB of the file. I use slower or slow but wouldn't recommend anything above medium.
