Compressing with the highest quality

[guitarscn]

I picked Handbrake as my program of choice after experimenting with multiple options because it has presets where I don't have to make any manual adjustments because I have no clue about what 'bitrates' mean and whatnot, and it also takes its time to encode for the fullest and best quality instead of those other programs that take a few hours and the result isn't the best quality compared to the results I've seen on Handbrake.

Anyway, I have a VIDEO_TS directory with a bunch of .VOB, files as well as a couple of .IFO and .BUP ones. I've already figured out the .VOB files were the main video files, but anyway I clicked on the VIDEO_TS directory and it loaded fine.

I saved it to a different folder as a name and chose avi format below the name I chose and saved that.

Then I clicked on the "Constant Quality Rate" preset because I think it's the best next to "Bedlam" but as the Handbrake wiki describes, "Bedlam" is too insane for me (as I need to encode several DVDs and on my cheap, slow processor, 400+ hours is not a time I can wait for one video to encode).

So after setting "Constant Quality Rate", I wanted one 2 GB file so I set the "Target Size" in the "Video" tab under the "Quality" section of it to 2,000 or so. Then I clicked "Start" because I don't know what any of the other settings mean.

After about a whole day (~24 hours), the end result was great quality. But there were two major issues:

1) No audio at all whatsoever
2) I cannot scan/navigate through the video. (Like on the timer scale in my media player, it moves along to the right as the video plays, but if I try to click in the middle to skip to the middle of the movie, it just freezes for like forever.)

But other than these 2 problems, the quality was awesome, the resolution was perfect just like on the DVD (as well as the aspect ratio), and I was very happy it was DVD quality but compressed into 2 GB.

I have K-Lite Media Codecs installed with the most codecs support so I think I have all the right codecs (I could be wrong though).

How can I fix these issues?

[Baldrick]

What video and audio codecs are you using?

[guitarscn]

For the Output Settings, the Encoder is H.264 and Audio Encoder is AC3.

[poisondeathray]

Run the output file through mediainfo, what does it say about the audio?

Your computer specs (1.7Ghz Celeron) might not be high enough to playback h.264 (even at 2000kbps), hence the seeking problem

One option is to rip the DVD audio separately (with dvd decryter or dvd shrink - assuming your dvd is not a recent version of copy protection - otherwise use dvd fab), then join it with the video with yamb into an .mp4 container. If you want you can encode the audio into mp3 or aac before you mux it.

EDIT: I should add that if you plan on keeping AC3 audio, don't use a .mp4 container (not compatible), but h.264 is not completely compatible in an .avi container either (can cause studdering on playback, depending on the number of b-frames used during encoding). Best container would be .mkv which has no problems with any format. You could then use mkvmergegui to merge audio & video.

[Midzuki]

Full D-1 H264 playback via CoreAVC should not be a problem even for a 1.7GHz CPU.
Make sure you don't have other applications and unnecessary processes trying to run
at the same time (antivirus and screensavers, for example).

[jman98]

Full D-1 H264 playback via CoreAVC should not be a problem even for a 1.7GHz CPU.
Make sure you don't have other applications and unnecessary processes trying to run
at the same time (antivirus and screensavers, for example).

While this is mostly good advice, I have to say that CoreAVC is NOT a magic bullet for all of us, despite what people seem to think for whom it does work very well. I have an old 3200 AMD CPU and CoreAVC makes no difference to it. If I use VLC, I can get decent H.264 playback for standard def and even up to 720p it's OK. Using CoreAVC does not help on my PC, not at all.

Anyway, the original poster is trying to do an awful lot in getting this very underpowered and old CPU to playback H.264 and none of us have any idea why he can't hear audio. I have never used Handbrake (not really into H.264) so I can't help with that. He can try CoreAVC and see if it helps, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't.

[guitarscn]

Since my computer is underpowered, I was thinking maybe I can just use XviD and it won't sacrifice too much quality. And maybe change the audio to MP3 to save room for better video quality. I don't mind having a .mkv container; just thought .avi was standard. But I can leave it as a .mkv container