Question: what quality settings do you prefer on AVCHD?

[calgunner]

Just outta curiosity what quality setting do you prefer when using AVCHD? I know 1 pass insane would be used more for testing but I heard a lot of people use 1 pass turbo for final burn. Is two pass HQ even worth it considering how much time it takes? Let me know folks. Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

It depends on content complexity, source footage characteristics (including duration)

For difficult to compress footage - high motion, high detail, noisy footage, you need higher bitrates for a certain level of "quality" . For AVCHD you have fixed capacity limitations, and might not have good enough compression at some of the faster settings in those situations

For easy to compress footage, something like simple cartoons, or low motion, stable, clean footage - you can get away with using faster settings and easily fit onto DVD5/9

Also user perceptions - some people aren't very sensitive to "quality". e.g. some people thing youtube offers great quality, others think it's horrible

[yoda313]

some people thing youtube offers great quality, others think it's horrible

It largely depends on the source material and the encoding choices of the uploader.

A vhs poorly capped and bitrate starved will look horrible. However a high def source either a hd cam or bluray source properly encoded with the hd resolution preserved can in fact look very good. Even a dvd rip encoded for youtube can look "good" if its not butchered.

Of course poisondeathray is right in pointing out this is a relative thing. Some people can tell the slightest imperfection (or "believe" they can notice a difference). Others wouldn't notice a thing from a compressed source.

Unfortunately this is something that doesn't have a true hard and fast science too it. Generally speaking the higher the bitrate the better the quality assuming a clean digital source.

As with a lot of things in the digital world I would suggest running test encodes with your likely source material. A good thing would be to test movie trailers from either dvds or blurays. That way you would start with the best possible source and it will be a fast encode on just about any computer. Also another benefit of using trailers is they usually have lots of high motion too them and lots of split second cuts and fades. That should give you an extreme sample to test if its from a big action flick. You could also test trailers from comedies and dramas that would have less dramatic trailers with more sweeping shots and less frantic cutting.

In the end it is really up to you to decide. We can give you generalities but without knowing what your source materials will be nor what your tolerance threshold is it is difficult to give a specific answer.