Handbrake File Size

[Mumbles37]

I have been converting my DVD series to mkv/mp4 for years and the file sizes have always bothered me. I just upgraded to the newest version of Handbrake and every preset seems to give insane file sizes. I'm ripping a series with 45 minute episodes right now and they are coming in at over a gig apiece. As a test I ran the 30 second preview under a ton of different presets and they were all between 7 and 9mb for a 30 second clip. That's roughly 600 to 800mb each episode. I thought .x265 was supposed to have substantially lower filesizes but it was in the same range. Can some seasoned vet tell me if I'm just expecting for the impossible here? Is it really not possible to have 300-400mb episode sizes? It's an old SD TV series from the 80s. I'm hoping not to have to encode 10 hours an episode or anything, but even when I chose "Very Slow" encoding the file size didn't drop (and the quality didn't get appreciably better).

Thanks!

[ProWo]

Try my clever FFmpeg-GUI, set x264 as encoder, crf 23, preset veryfast.

[Mumbles37]

Try my clever FFmpeg-GUI, set x264 as encoder, crf 23, preset veryfast.

I had previously ripped the DVDs to my HDD. I pointed clever FFmpeg at the VOB and it made a new VOB of the whole episode (took several minutes), however at the end it threw a bunch of errors. I quit out and tried the x86 version just in case, same issue. Continued past the errors and it says "Analyzing video" but it's clear the errors stopped that from actually occurring. Here is the error text:

See the end of this message for details on invoking 
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The system cannot find the file specified
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithCreateProcess(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
   at clever_FFmpeg_GUI.Module1.ShowVideoTracks()
   at clever_FFmpeg_GUI.Form2.Show_Tracks()
   at clever_FFmpeg_GUI.Form2.Button2_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4300.0 built by: NET48REL1LAST_C
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
clever FFmpeg GUI
    Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.6.9
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Temp/cleverffmpeg/x86/clever%20FFmpeg%20GUI.exe
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.VisualBasic
    Assembly Version: 10.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 14.8.4084.0 built by: NET48REL1
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/v4.0_10.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
----------------------------------------
System
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4300.0 built by: NET48REL1LAST_C
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Core
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4300.0 built by: NET48REL1LAST_C
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Core/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Core.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4270.0 built by: NET48REL1LAST_C
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4084.0 built by: NET48REL1
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4190.0 built by: NET48REL1LAST_B
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4084.0 built by: NET48REL1
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Runtime.Remoting
    Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 4.8.4084.0 built by: NET48REL1
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
    <system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

[ProWo]

Retry with the newest beta; it seems a duration info problem.

[Mumbles37]

Retry with the newest beta; it seems a duration info problem.

Sorry, downloaded the beta/nightly and still getting errors. I deleted the .vob the earlier version made of the whole episode and the new version created it again, then errored out at the same point as last time.

Anything I can do to help you troubleshoot? Should this move to a different forum location?

[TeeDawwg]

Handbrake used to have a setting for desired file size, I used it all the time. After they removed it, I started using https://vidcoder.net/, just because it kept that feature while using the Handbrake encoder.

Import your file, select the gear at the end of the file name>Video Encoding Tab, set Quality to Target Size and insert the value you want.

[ProWo]

Retry with the newest beta; it seems a duration info problem.

Anything I can do to help you troubleshoot? Should this move to a different forum location?

Remux the vob first with mkvtoolnix to mkv and load the mkv into clever ffmpeg-gui

[abolibibelot]

Handbrake used to have a setting for desired file size, I used it all the time. After they removed it, I started using https://vidcoder.net/, just because it kept that feature while using the Handbrake encoder.

But it's better, generally speaking, to have a set quality setting rather than a set size setting, as different contents can have vastly different bitrate requirements for the same perceived quality preservation. Target file size should be used only when there's a specific requirement, like fitting X files on a DVD. With x264, CRF = 23 as suggested above seems about right to get a significant size shrinking with a decent quality preservation ; beyond that, quality will start to dwindle pretty fast ; unless O.P. is satisfied with the likes of Y*FY releases, then it can be increased to CRF = 27 or moar...
Don't know how these numbers translate with x265. All I can say is that I've watched a few movies encoded in 1280xsomething (which is stupidly called “720p” even if the height is cropped way below that) in x265 at low bitrate and while the quality was generally decent, they exhibited ugly motion artifacts, the kind of which I've never seen with low bitrate x264 encodes. In particular, hardcoded subtitles over a moving background result in an atrocious mess. (In this case the movie is Rush, about the 1976 Formula 1 championship, so there's a lot of motion, duration is 2h02m and it's in 59.94 FPS which probably doesn't help to get it all crammed down to 823MB, or 767MB for the video stream, or 874kbps. According to MediaInfo it was encoded with crf=26. I notice just now that audio is OGG Vorbis at only 64kbps, yet I wasn't bothered by the audio quality.)