Handbrake Should i leave it on?

[JackDanielZ]

Hello everybody.

I use Handbrake 0.9.6 newest version and the profile (high profile)

Should I leave detelecine and decomb on? will it hurt my dvdrips its normal dvdrip some movies are old some movies are new..

Also what is the best setting if we talk quality?

I want MP4 and AAC because I use it with my Xbox 360 trough the ps3 mediaserver.

Sincerely
JaclDanielZ

[hello_hello]

I'm not a Handbrake user but the guides say leave it on. Hmm........

According the the guides I looked at it won't effect quality but you just reminded me of one of the reasons why I didn't quite like Handbrake when I tried it years ago. Ideally, if a video is progressive you'd want to not being using any IVTC or de-interlacing filters. Even if it doesn't effect the quality I'd assume it must slow things down to some degree.

MeGUI (and no doubt many other encoder GUIs) have an option to run an analysis on the video before encoding to work out what filters are required and the most appropriate ones to use. If the source is progressive it doesn't use any. Seems like a better way to do it to me, but unless you know the source is progressive (most Bluray video is) it might pay to leave them on. Someone will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if the frame rate of DVDs is 23.976 then it's progressive and it's safe to disable the filters. If it's 29.970 then you probably want to leave them enabled. I'm in PAL-Land where everything's 25fps and DVDs can be either progressive or interlaced, so for PAL DVDs you'd probably want to use a de-interlacing filter such as Yadif, just in case....
I don't know if Handbrake changes the filters automatically depending on the type of DVD you're encoding. Maybe a Handbrake user will come along with some better advice.

[JackDanielZ]

@Hello_hello Thank you very much for your help.. I have used MEGUI before to be honest I really cant figure it out, Mostly I use Handbrake it gives me fast compression and good qulity I think because I have nothing to compare it with because I have only tried Staxrip.

The FPS things you are saying about MEGUI is maybe my problem with Handbrake because when I try to Compress my TV DVB-C rips its like the screen are jumping when the ball is moving forward..

By the way yes, if you put these two things on a talked about in my first post, the compression will take much more time.

[aedipuss]

i mostly use vidcoder(gui and batch front end for handbrake) and leaving decomb and detelecine on all the time is fine. they only turn on when needed and leave progressive content alone. decomb uses yadif de-interlacing.

[hello_hello]

The FPS things you are saying about MEGUI is maybe my problem with Handbrake because when I try to Compress my TV DVB-C rips its like the screen are jumping when the ball is moving forward..

It does sound like it might be getting IVTC'd or deinterlaced when it shouldn't, or not correctly, or something......

MeGUI does have a bit more of a learning curve than some other GUIs. Maybe if you keep having problems when converting the DVB-C rips, try uploading a sample somewhere for others to download and look at.

By the way yes, if you put these two things on a talked about in my first post, the compression will take much more time.

If they're actually being used then they probably will slow things down. aedipuss says Vidcoder (which I understand is an alternative HandBrake GUI) only activates the filters if they're required, although I'm not sure how it'd work out whether they're required without analyzing the video first, or whether Handbrake works the same way (according to the guides I read it doesn't).
Maybe it's easy enough to look at the script Handbrake creates to see if those filters are always being added, or maybe I should leave the Handbrake advice to someone who uses it and knows what they're talking about....

[Peppino]

Leave detelecine and decomb at "Default". Leave Deinterlace, Denoise, and Deblock on "Off" unless your source video needs it.

More info on these Handbrake settings:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/PictureSettings

I use the following settings and get excellent quality results. But after you configure your settings and before you do the encode, always click the "Preview" button and set a preview of the encode to run for 1 minute to make sure you are happy with the way it looks instead of having to spend hours on an encode only to find out you don't like the way it looks.

Preset
High Profile

Container
MP4

Picture
Anamorphic: Strict

Video Filters
Default settings

Video
Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
Framerate: Same as source - Select "Constant Framerate"
Quality: Select "Constant Quality" at RF:19

Audio
If source audio is AAC: AAC Passthru
If source audio is anything else: AAC (faac) or AAC (ffmpeg)

[JackDanielZ]

Peppino@ Thank you.. One question.. Why do you chose Constant Frame-rate? instead of Variable frame-rate.
One sorry... RF 19 is that better quality then 20?
Thank you very much to you and anyone else helping me in this thread.

[Hoser Rob]

CRF 19 is definitely better than 20, especially with h.264 because with xvid it's a linear scale but it's logarithmic with h.264.

Beyond a certain point it's going to be placebo, depending upon the source resolution. I've seen fairly convincing arguments that for DVD (480p) res it's a CRF of 19.25.

I've tried encoding the same snippet of DVD video, pretty nicely tweaked, with CRF of 19.25 and 18. I cannot tell the difference.

There's very good info in the handbrake docs, particularly in Tunes & Presets. That's the best single place I've found because it suggests settings for different types of content. That's where a lot of the complexity of all those nice h.264 bells and whistles comes in. There isn't one perfect setting that works for everything. Plus there's personal taste.

The handbrake doc site also points you to the mencoder x.264 guide. There are some really good suggestions there.

Also, check out Lord Mulder's posts re handbrake and h.264 in the doom9 forum.

[jagabo]

CRF 19 is definitely better than 20, especially with h.264 because with xvid it's a linear scale but it's logarithmic with h.264.

Beyond a certain point it's going to be placebo, depending upon the source resolution. I've seen fairly convincing arguments that for DVD (480p) res it's a CRF of 19.25.

I've tried encoding the same snippet of DVD video, pretty nicely tweaked, with CRF of 19.25 and 18. I cannot tell the difference.

The difference between 19.25 and 18 is pretty small and would be hard to see. But if you know what to look for you'll see that you have get down to about CRF 12 to approach "placebo". Take a look at this dark grainy shot (where x264's weaknesses lie) from Star Trek Insurrection at CRF 18, 15, and 12.

You can get the CRF 18 version to look almost as good as the CRF 12 version by adding "--aq-mode=2 --aq-strength=1.8" to the command line. But then the size will turn out about the same as the CRF 12 version.

 x264.exe --preset=slow --tune=grain --crf=18 --sar=1:1 --output %1.mkv %1

[_Al_]

If there is only couple of troubled scenes there is a thing called zones in MeGui, where for a particular scenes (start frame, end frame) there could be adjusted quantizer or bitstream. I know, it means to encode video two times basicaly, just to find out some troubled scenes first time and for CRF mode usually bitrate is not a given anyway, but the thing is there ...

[JackDanielZ]

Forgive me for being slow.. but the RF how is the value 0 it and higest count is ? what is better.. I really understood it better when it was #

[jagabo]

Think of the rate factor as how much detail is thrown away. The higher you set it the more details you will lose. 0 is lossless in x264. The setting goes up to 51 -- very poor quality.

[jagabo]

If there is only couple of troubled scenes there is a thing called zones in MeGui, where for a particular scenes (start frame, end frame) there could be adjusted quantizer or bitstream.

Yes, you could use zones to encode different parts of the movie with different settings. The problem is, once you're aware of this weakness you start seeing it all over the place. Any time there's a dark shot, or dark part of the frame, you'll notice these posterization artifacts.

[JackDanielZ]

Thank you awesome I only have on last question then I am ready.. I want to talk Framerate there is a thing called "Variable framerate" and one called "constant Framerate" witch one should I chose? I have also heard from someone that is a bad idea to chose "same as source" have no idea myself about this framerate stuff? please help me and I am done with asking ) thank you all so far.

[JackDanielZ]

Last thing:

Should i edit this:
http://www.myupload.dk/v/1MmOVdiL_.jpg

[Peppino]

Peppino@ Thank you.. One question.. Why do you chose Constant Frame-rate? instead of Variable frame-rate.
One sorry... RF 19 is that better quality then 20?
Thank you very much to you and anyone else helping me in this thread.

I PM'd you.

Do you mean Constant Framerate vs Variable framerate? It's because some devices don't support variable framerate so why take a chance if you're going to play it on some new device you get and it won't be compatible? Then you have to encode the video all over again. Just a safe guard.

The only reason I select RF 19 is because for me, it looks better on some DVD's and videos I encode and the produced file size is good. It preserve all visible detail in the source video yet produces a size that's not to big. Going from RF 18 to 0 the produced video gets bigger and bigger yet the eye won't really see any difference in Quality than RF 19. In fact, if you use RF 0, the produced video will end up being bigger than the source. Defeats the purpose.

But you be the judge. Encode something using the different settings then do a 120 second preview. See how it looks to you vs the file size produced.

Cheers!

[jagabo]

I would use constant frame rate unless you have a mixed frame rate source.

[Peppino]

Last thing:

Should i edit this:
http://www.myupload.dk/v/1MmOVdiL_.jpg

That's for the RF Quality slider. By default it moves in 1/4 increments (RF 19, 18.75, 18.50, etc.). Setting that will change it to smaller or larger increments. Me personally, I don't see the need to be that precise.

[JackDanielZ]

Thank you everybody.. This is the best place in the world for getting help... Awesome place.. and again thank you..

[JakeFantom]

I joined this forum specifically to thank Peppino for this excellent and succinct piece of information. It has tremendously upgraded the quality of my results with Handbrake. Many of the digital files I had played in XBMC, viewed on a new Samsung LED TV, showed jerky playback (including many PAL videos as well as some NTSC ones). Using Peppino's directions, playback is perfectly smooth and the quality of the video and audio identical (sometimes even seems better) than the original. Thank you, Peppino. Your generous, easy-to-understand help is very much appreciated.

Leave detelecine and decomb at "Default". Leave Deinterlace, Denoise, and Deblock on "Off" unless your source video needs it.

More info on these Handbrake settings:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/PictureSettings

I use the following settings and get excellent quality results. But after you configure your settings and before you do the encode, always click the "Preview" button and set a preview of the encode to run for 1 minute to make sure you are happy with the way it looks instead of having to spend hours on an encode only to find out you don't like the way it looks.

Preset
High Profile

Container
MP4

Picture
Anamorphic: Strict

Video Filters
Default settings

Video
Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
Framerate: Same as source - Select "Constant Framerate"
Quality: Select "Constant Quality" at RF:19

Audio
If source audio is AAC: AAC Passthru
If source audio is anything else: AAC (faac) or AAC (ffmpeg)