"General" encoding methods and settings

[Vol4Ever]

I realize up front this is a rather loaded question, but hopefully someone way smarter than me understands and can answer. A ton of TV shows that I download are 350-400 MB for a 45 min recording, and then 800 MB to 1 GB for general movies. AVI and MP4 seem to be the most popular formats.

My end goal is to downsize MTS files that come off our HD hand held at the rate of about 1 GB per 8 minutes. We have plenty of hard drive space, but I want to lighten the load for family who like to stream home videos remotely and also be able to put a decent amount of footage on 4.7 GB DVD's for sharing. The ratios from my original statement would be great. There must be some sort of standard or something that I don't know about as those file sizes are really common coming from random, different sources for totally different TV shows.

I currently have Handbrake, WinAvi, and Audials One (none of which I am very skilled in). Freeware is good, but I certainly don't mind investing in a decent, user friendly software package if there is one that comes highly recommended. I played around with WinAvi, but for the life of me I can't get anything even close to the desired compression ratio.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

~Vol

P.S. The simpler the better. Utopia would be a drag & drop style batch converter that didn't have a bazillion line item encoder options to figure out. I'm not an AV professional!

[aedipuss]

there is only one rule for video filesize. filesize = bitrate x time. that's it. no options. how you achieve that filesize is up to you. higher bitrates mean larger files but also higher quality video.

a fairly easy to use handbrake frontend/gui is vidcoder. you can specify the output in terms of quality, bitrate, or filesize. you might wish to make both high quality files and low bitrate for streaming files as they are incompatible outcomes.

[Selur]

there is only one rule for video filesize. filesize = bitrate x time.

+ container overhead
for fun: encode video with a low resolution and a low quantizer (just to get a small file size) and mux it into a transport stream container and then compare the size of the raw video stream and the muxed output

[dontworry]

hi, i'm trying to convert dvds into something (mp4, mkv, something like that) but whatever settings I use it's just not right, the picture is shrunk into the middle of the screen.
Could you help me, what settings should I use. Thanx in advance.
Csaba

[redwudz]

I use VidCoder.

H264 encoding, framerate same as source, Constant Quality to 18.5 (or higher if you want a smaller file). Detelecine set to default.
Audio to Passthrough, AC3.

Everything else set to default.

Other members may have different options.

And welcome to our forums

[dontworry]

Hi, thank you for the welcome and your help. I'm gonna try it.
Csaba

[stonesfan99]

I use VidCoder.

H264 encoding, framerate same as source, Constant Quality to 18.5 (or higher if you want a smaller file). Detelecine set to default.
Audio to Passthrough, AC3.

Everything else set to default.

Other members may have different options.

And welcome to our forums

I second this. I would even try CQ20 to save a little bit of disk space. I typically use AC3 5.1 640kbps or AC3 2.0 192kbps for audio.

[dontworry]

Thanx for your kind help. I'm trying, though it doesn't seem to be an easy program to set. I was more successful with Handbrake,but it was too slow for me. So thanx again. Have a nice day. Csaba

[jagabo]

Thanx for your kind help. I'm trying, though it doesn't seem to be an easy program to set. I was more successful with Handbrake,but it was too slow for me. So thanx again. Have a nice day. Csaba

VidCoder uses the same encoding engine as Handbrake. So it's the same speed when the same settings are used. But there is a 100 fold difference in encoding speed between x264's ultrafast (fastest) and placebo (slowest) presets. In general, slower presets deliver better quality.

[Bernix]

Hi Jagabo,
I think there are some difference. Main I spoted is Handbrake handle correctly mkv files made from several videoparts in mkvtoolnix. Result is O.K, but vidcoder result is wrong. So there is some difference, that is very important. The result of vidcoder is as results of majority encoders GUI, bad for these files.

Bernix.

[jagabo]

Hi Jagabo,
I think there are some difference. Main I spoted is Handbrake handle correctly mkv files made from several videoparts in mkvtoolnix. Result is O.K, but vidcoder result is wrong. So there is some difference, that is very important. The result of vidcoder is as results of majority encoders GUI, bad for these files.

Bernix.

That's a source handling issue, not an encoding speed issue. Pretty much all the free h.264 encoders use x264 and run about the same speed at the same settings (aside from other processing they may perform). Some can use hardware h.264 encoders (eg, Handbrake can use Intel QuickSync) for faster encoding but the tradeoff is lower quality and/or larger file sizes.

[stonesfan99]

I would also check out BD Rebuilder. It encodes a little bit faster than Handbrake using the same x264 speeds. I also like it because of the multi-use of the program compared to Handbrake. DVDFab is about the fastest encoding I have tried, but not worth it when the free options are arguably better.