Couple XMedia Recode Questions

[donotron]

Hey Guys,

SO I dumped Pavtube in favor of MakeMKV and Xmedia Recode. I am very happy with this solution.

I am sacrificing the speed of Pavtube's CUDA implementation in favor of the quality of the the handbrake engine's 2-pass encoding. Is there ANYPLACE that fully explains all the parameters of the encoder ?

I want to become an expert in ripping without resorting to the trial and error methods often mentioned.

Do the presets fast-slow-slower etc simply adjust bitrate ? What are they doing ? When I switch from medium to slower my encode times quadruple. Or does this setting actually filter the image ?

My goal is to be able to produce rips of my blu rays to my Plex server ... and keep the file sizes respectable (6 GB or less) but maintain image quality.

How do I learn about quantizing settings etc.

Thanks so much !!

[jagabo]

Presets control encoding speed (how much time the encoder spends looking for better ways to compress the video). Generally, faster presets give lower quality.

x264 settings: http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings

If you're putting files on a server, why bother with 2pass encoding? Just use RF (CRF in x264). Find an RF value that suits your taste and encode all your videos at that RF. With 2pass encoding you pick the bitrate and the encoder delivers whatever quality it can at that bitrate. With RF encoding you pick the quality and the encoder uses whatever bitrate is necessary to deliver that quality.

[donotron]

Presets control encoding speed (how much time the encoder spends looking for better ways to compress the video). Generally, faster presets give lower quality.

x264 settings: http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings

If you're putting files on a server, why bother with 2pass encoding? Just use RF (CRF in x264). Find an RF value that suits your taste and encode all your videos at that RF. With 2pass encoding you pick the bitrate and the encoder delivers whatever quality it can at that bitrate. With RF encoding you pick the quality and the encoder uses whatever bitrate is necessary to deliver that quality.

Thanks !! To answer your question regarding using CRF ... THe answer is because im a noob .. lol.

Seriously .. I though 2-pass would give me a nice result for streaming when I am away from home. I will read your link carefully ... thanks again !!!!

[jagabo]

Most people looking for high quality encoding use a rate factor around 18 to 20.

[donotron]

Most people looking for high quality encoding use a rate factor around 18 to 20.

Do they leave the quality setting at medium ?

[jagabo]

Do they leave the quality setting at medium ?

I usually use slow for standard definition material. Going slower than that only gets you a tiny bit more compression and image quality. For unimportant stuff I'll often use veryfast -- that gives slightly rough edges on moving objects a little loss of small, low contrast detail.

[donotron]

3 hour film is coming in pretty large ...

12GB
rate factor = 19
medium

[jagabo]

Yes, but the next movie might come it at 5 GB. Both will have similar quality relative to their sources.

The difference in size between veryfast and placebo is usually only about 10 percent. The higher presets give slightly better visual quality too. But Going beyond slow or veryslow is usually a waste of time and energy. The difference in size will usually be less than 1 percent. And if you look at enlarged still frames you'll see minor differences in the picture but you won't really be able to say which looks better.

One thing to note: encoding standard definition material requires better quality as the defects will be enlarged upon viewing. For example, 8x8 block artifact at 720x480 will be blown up to ~21x18 block when viewed on a 1920x1080 TV. But 8x8 block artifacts in a 1920x1080 video will remain that same size on the TV.