Convert BD Rips to h264 MP4 with Handbrake 0.9.6

[glenpinn]

hi, been trying out some programs to convert BD rips to h264 (either MP4 or AVI container) and have settled on 2 apps for basic settings and output where you dont get a lot of choice regarding video output settings.

the 2 i chose are DVDFab (been using it for years and now has support for most formats) and the other one i just found is Arcsoft MediaCreater 7.5, which i quite like as well, very similar output settings and encode times to DVDFab.

my qosmio laptop is an i7 720qm with a gts250 graphics card, so i can use cuda with these 2 programs.

i have now decided to give Handbrake 0.9.6 a go, and i love it, but im still a bit unclear on the advanced settings i should use for output to h264 MP4.

my sample file is a 5 min clip taken from a BD movie, and i am happy with the resulting output file using the stock advanced settings, but after looking at a tutorial video in youtube, i see i should be using different advanced settings to get the output better.

in the video they use an older version of handbrake, so the settings options in the advanced tab are somewhat different than in the 0.9.6 version i have, so i am still unsure of the other settings not shown in that tutorial.

can someone please show me a link to a recent tutorial, or screenshot of the current version showing all the output settings tabs so i can get my settings a bit better.

also, in handbrake, i see there is no option to set hardware acceleration like DVDFab and MediaConverter has (to select Software, Cuda, QSync or APP) but when i do output a conversion, i notice high cpu usage (around 80%) and there is about 1% to 5% graphics usage showing in MSI Afterburner, so does this indicate that Handbrake is using Cuda, or is it not.

one more thing, i tried to use a tool called SolveigMM Video Splitter (3.0) to cut and split up a BD movie but the dam thing keeps crashing and it is frustrating me, so is there another free tool out there that i can use to cut bits away from the BD movie.

cheers

[ashe09]

i know man,
1) you just try all the option on your 5 min. sample,
that's the only way,to learn handbrake,
2) second thing you convert your BD movies in mkvmerge and edit (i mean) cut or marge

[Baldrick]

I prefer VidCoder. It's based on handbrake.

Use the High Profile preset and then adjust the video h264 bitrate settings, use constant quality around 20 for very good quality, change the x264 preset to slowest for even better quality.

[glenpinn]

hi guys, thx for the replies, is it advisable to do a 2 pass on h264/mkv from a BD rip.

i was led to believe Avg bitrate was better than constant quality, the guy who does the afterdawn video tutorial must be wrong ???

what settings in advance tab do i use for high profile, as this is where i got confused in handbrake, or do i just leave the stock settings as they are already set by default.

i found VLC and WMP wont play some audio formats, especially WMP, so what i need is a guide with screenshots of each tab screen in either handbrake or Vidcoder.

will download Vidcoder now and try it out, but i was happy to use handbrake if i knew what settings to put in the advance tab.

i also like MediaCreater as a conversion tool, but its not as customizable as handbrake.

cheers

EDIT: i just installed VidCoder and to be honest, the advanced tab options are about the same as in handbrake, but i cant find where to select the High profile option, as i only get the Normal preset box open when i click on the encoder settings tab at the top of the interface.

personally i like the handbrake interface over VidCoder, to me VidCoder looks like candy, but i am aware it is the same thing as handbrake.

if i use the High profile setting in handbrake, the encoding time is much slower than the normal profile setting, and in a 90min test encode i did from BD to h264 mp4, the Normal profile took 62 seconds and the high profile setting took 297 seconds, both used 85% cpu usage on average, and graphics usage in MSI afterburner showed only 1% to 5% usage so im not sure if my i7 720qm cpu and gts250 graphics were working with Cuda or not.