just to be sure...your saying that checking ipod 5g support will allow for play on both?
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Best Handbrake 0.9.3 settings for ATV
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just to be sure...your saying that checking ipod 5g support will allow for play on both?
NP.
Because I'm using the average bit rate option, I don't believe there's any benefit to using the two-pass setting (IIRC). In fact, before I'd read up on this, I'd tried with the two-pass w/turbo, w/out turbo and this option not selected and it yielded the same results.
Let me know if you have any other questions on this... -TD
NP.
Because I'm using the average bit rate option, I don't believe there's any benefit to using the two-pass setting (IIRC). In fact, before I'd read up on this, I'd tried with the two-pass w/turbo, w/out turbo and this option not selected and it yielded the same results.
Let me know if you have any other questions on this... -TD
Well, actually two pass is *only* used with abr, its not even an option when using constant quality, as its totally incompatible and in fact won't even work. You certainly can argue the merits of two pass in relation to benefit/encoding time, but abr is the one case where two pass is available to you.
Well, as I said try the existing preset (the new one) on a 1080 source and see how it looks, as long as it doesn't drop frames it should look stunning.
If it drops frames, nudge the slider down to like 56 - 58.
Realize that Constant Quality encoding is a totally different mindset than abr (old atv preset). You will always have a given visual quality since HB will use more or less bitrate as needed to maintain that quality even from scene to scene, so a mellow scene of two people talking might only call for 1000 kbps bitrate but another scene that is very complex with alot of action might require 5000 kbps to maintain the same quality. It's really a great way to go. Now for the caveat: there is no way to predict your bitrate during complex scenes, it could feasibly balloon to 10,000 kbps if need be. However, I did quite a bit of testing before release on sd dvd's with some of my real frame droppers and that 59% preset proved to be very reliable with a very nice quality picture.
For reference, I personally encode all of my own material at 62% which is at the top edge of overkill, but with a 1TB eSata modde atv, whats a few GB amongst friends
Note, my observation is the quality is better than the old 2500 abr preset and in most cases the file size is the same or even smaller since high quality low complexity sources do not require an abr of 2500 much less > 3500 to be basically transparent to the source dvd.
I don't remember the last time I used abr for an atv encode.
I figured I was interpreting that wrong... d'oh!
Using my aformentioned settings, I really haven't seen any appreciable difference with the two pass setting, so I felt the additional time utilized with this setting wasn't worthwhile.
When 0.9.3 came out, I tried using the default AppleTV setting (59% constant quality) with some of the films I've previously decoded with the ABR 3500K settings and the file size was reduced by quite a bit, however there was substantial compression, hence the switch back to the ABR option.
I may try CQ again bumping it up to possibly 65% to see if there's any noticable difference in the video output, I just haven't done extensive testing between the two as my G4 Dual 1Ghz MDD takes a bit of time with the H.264 encoding.
Thks for the suggestions Dynaflash...
-TD
I use my windows PC and have my xbox 360 HD-DVD drive plugged into it. I am using Vista so it has the UDF drivers already installed and can read HD-DVD discs. I then use AnyDVD HD to rip the HD-DVD to the harddrive and use ToNMT to create the .ts file that Handbrake can encode
Well, as I said try the existing preset (the new one) on a 1080 source and see how it looks, as long as it doesn't drop frames it should look stunning.
If it drops frames, nudge the slider down to like 56 - 58.
Realize that Constant Quality encoding is a totally different mindset than abr (old atv preset). You will always have a given visual quality since HB will use more or less bitrate as needed to maintain that quality even from scene to scene, so a mellow scene of two people talking might only call for 1000 kbps bitrate but another scene that is very complex with alot of action might require 5000 kbps to maintain the same quality. It's really a great way to go. Now for the caveat: there is no way to predict your bitrate during complex scenes, it could feasibly balloon to 10,000 kbps if need be. However, I did quite a bit of testing before release on sd dvd's with some of my real frame droppers and that 59% preset proved to be very reliable with a very nice quality picture.
For reference, I personally encode all of my own material at 62% which is at the top edge of overkill, but with a 1TB eSata modde atv, whats a few GB amongst friends
Note, my observation is the quality is better than the old 2500 abr preset and in most cases the file size is the same or even smaller since high quality low complexity sources do not require an abr of 2500 much less > 3500 to be basically transparent to the source dvd.
I don't remember the last time I used abr for an atv encode.
Since I got away with the last daft question, I thought I'd try again
currently does x264 not allow a constant quality mode, but with a bitrate cap (although yes, this wouldn't technically be a 'CQ' encode)? For the very reason that devices like the ATV can't cope with an unlimited bitrate. I'm assuming this is a no, otherwise it would be easy to implement in Handbrake.
Well, as I said try the existing preset (the new one) on a 1080 source and see how it looks, as long as it doesn't drop frames it should look stunning.
If it drops frames, nudge the slider down to like 56 - 58.
Realize that Constant Quality encoding is a totally different mindset than abr (old atv preset). You will always have a given visual quality since HB will use more or less bitrate as needed to maintain that quality even from scene to scene, so a mellow scene of two people talking might only call for 1000 kbps bitrate but another scene that is very complex with alot of action might require 5000 kbps to maintain the same quality. It's really a great way to go. Now for the caveat: there is no way to predict your bitrate during complex scenes, it could feasibly balloon to 10,000 kbps if need be. However, I did quite a bit of testing before release on sd dvd's with some of my real frame droppers and that 59% preset proved to be very reliable with a very nice quality picture.
For reference, I personally encode all of my own material at 62% which is at the top edge of overkill, but with a 1TB eSata modde atv, whats a few GB amongst friends
Note, my observation is the quality is better than the old 2500 abr preset and in most cases the file size is the same or even smaller since high quality low complexity sources do not require an abr of 2500 much less > 3500 to be basically transparent to the source dvd.
I don't remember the last time I used abr for an atv encode.
What an excellent and thorough explanation. Thank you, Dynaflash.
One quick question. Does Handbrake provide any way to cap bitrate? For example, if I am encoding a Blu-Ray Rip, and I plan on encoding it at 59% quality on the ATV preset... can I set a maximum bitrate of 8000 or whatever the ATV can handle? That way I know I'm getting a good quality, but there's no need to watch the entire video through to make sure it works and go back and re-encode if there's one tiny spot which didn't work properly.
Often times I'll rip 5-10 movies at a time, and won't get a chance to watch through them for several months on the AppleTV. If there's no way to ensure there are no dropped frames other than watching it, the process becomes far more drawn out and tedious.
I'd like to personally thank Dynaflash and all of the Handbrake Devs. What an amazing piece of software, and we're all lucky that they provide it to us for free. 0.9.3 is by far the best release yet... here's to hoping the improvements keep coming!
Shame that I don't have an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive but thanks for the explanation. Maybe i'll invest in a used one in the near future.
In fact there is. But its not *quite* as simple as it may seem. Its called VBV which stands for video buffer verifier and is designed specifically to keep local bitrates within a given video/network buffer as the case may be. The appletv has both, however of course as usual apple is less than forthcoming with some of these specs.
It not settable with a simple widget as video buffers have a size and a length. Its set with two parameters in your advanced x264 panel: vbv-maxsize *and* vbv-bufsize.
I need to start testing atv 2.3 as I have noticed better playback without dropping frames (stuttering).
Anywhoo, the last vbv settings we were using on atv 2.1 when throwing extreme bitrate at the atv was
vbv-maxsize=4500:vbv-bufsize=3000
Two things to note here:
These both have to be set, many people make the mistake of thinking they know what vbv-maxsize is from the name. Its wrong. Its not a cap on the total bitrate. Also they will tend to just set maxsize and not bufsize (including the late VisualHUB). If you do this and watch your activity window you will see a warning from x264 that vbv-bufsize is not present to all vbv will be ignored.
Also, by its very nature setting too low of a vbv buffer with too high of a constant quality can cause issues as cq might call for big bitrate and vbv will deny it the bitrate it needs, resulting in a less than optimal picture. At any rate, proper vbv for the atv is a bit of a black art tbh as we really do not even know the buffer specs of the atv. As well, it tends to change from atv rev to atv rev as the buffer is determined in software.
Long story long: yes, it can be done, not easily but it can. Though having said that using the atv preset of 59% it shouldn't be very necessary except in all but the worst cases. I tested it on my "frame droppers" and it played smooth.
Do you mean not a problem with SD, more likely to be an issue with Blu-Ray sources?
Well, right. Constant Quality is kind of a wonky concept coming from abr. 100% is 100% of a *lossless* source, which neither blu ray or sd dvd is.
So.. thats why with about 62% constant quality on a sd dvd source you pretty much achieve total transparency since the source is already compressed (mpeg-2).
Blu ray and other hd sources tend to be compressed less and in a better fashion (h.264 vs. mpeg-2) so basically you are feeding HB a higher quality source which means for basically the same output at the end you would really *drop* the cq, but not always. I do not have much blu ray source to test with, but I have heard that actually the 0.9.3 atv preset of 59% quality has been pretty consistent with blu ray rips, which is bonus
Finally did some testing using Superbad:
I used Universal, the new AppleTV preset changed to 62% and the legacy preset with 2500, 2 pass (1st turbo).
File Size came out to be:
Universal: 1.62gb
New Preset: 1.72
Legacy: 2.56
The universal preset definitely looked the worst of the 3, my wife immediately discerned this one as the worst without me saying a word. She's my guinea pig for the blind taste test so to speak.
She thought both the new and legacy were good. After doing A/B comparisons she definitely felt the legacy version looked the best as far as details on the face and everything else.
We both concluded that for, 'good enough' movies - the new preset at 62% is good enough. For those 'awesome' movies then I would use the legacy preset.
Just throwing it out there for what it's worth.
I used Universal, the new AppleTV preset changed to 62% and the legacy preset with 2500, 2 pass (1st turbo).
File Size came out to be:
Universal: 1.62gb
New Preset: 1.72
Legacy: 2.56
The universal preset definitely looked the worst of the 3, my wife immediately discerned this one as the worst without me saying a word. She's my guinea pig for the blind taste test so to speak.
She thought both the new and legacy were good. After doing A/B comparisons she definitely felt the legacy version looked the best as far as details on the face and everything else.
We both concluded that for, 'good enough' movies - the new preset at 62% is good enough. For those 'awesome' movies then I would use the legacy preset.
Just throwing it out there for what it's worth.
dynaflash, can you expand a bit on how much better the new ATV preset is than the old one? What I'm wondering is whether it's worth reencoding some of my older rips, specifically:
1. which types of movie are likely to see the most benefit from reencoding
2. whether I'll see a lot of difference in general
I know I can test encode and see, but it's hard to do that and account for all the variables in lighting levels, action speed etc. that there are in a fairly diverse collection of films so a bit of guidance would be great.
I'd also like to echo fivepoint's praise to the HB team for a great (free!) resource. Thanks!
1. which types of movie are likely to see the most benefit from reencoding
2. whether I'll see a lot of difference in general
I know I can test encode and see, but it's hard to do that and account for all the variables in lighting levels, action speed etc. that there are in a fairly diverse collection of films so a bit of guidance would be great.
I'd also like to echo fivepoint's praise to the HB team for a great (free!) resource. Thanks!
I'm guessing it would really depend on the scene which you were analyzing. If it was a high-action scene, the new preset should perform better as a much higher bit-rate is being utilized to capture the data. However, if you were analyzing a slow scene with not much movement... the legacy will very likely have a higher quality output.
The philosophy behind the change is that you won't notice the slow-moving quality reduction, but you should really notice the much higher quality fast-moving scenes.
alFR, hopefully this answers part of your question as well.
dynaflash, a quick question here. (thanks so much for all of your replies so far) It seems like the new preset makes a TON of sense for a TON of movies. What I'm wondering now though... is for slow-moving movies with almost zero high-paced scenes. For those movies, it seems like we're getting files which are much smaller, with reduced video quality. It would seem that a good update for HB would be the ability to scan the DVD ahead of time, determine they 'style' of the video, and make adjustments to increase quality, etc. depending on that. Has this been discussed by the devs at all? How do we maintain the quality of slow-moving films when the equation being used by HB puts all of the resources behind the fast-moving scenes?
Using CQ/CRF with noisy/grainy sources can also be problematic. You'll end up with a file larger (sometimes by a significant amount) than with ABR. In these cases, you'd want to lower the % to compensate, or switch to ABR.
Concert DVDs are notorious for causing very large output files.
Concert DVDs are notorious for causing very large output files.
After using some of the recommendations from this post I have my own test results.
Using the AppleTV Preset and changing the CQ to 63%, I came out with a 2gig file for Run Fat Boy Run. The quality was not good.
I reran it using the AppleTV Preset but turned 2-pass on and obviously left CQ alone. File size increased to 2.5 gig but quality was there.
I will be sticking with 2-pass but any other tweaks I would be interested in.
Anormorphic - Strict? Loose? Affect on file size?
Deinterlace? Benefits? Affect on file size?
Detelecine? Benefits? Affect on file size?
Things like that?
Using the AppleTV Preset and changing the CQ to 63%, I came out with a 2gig file for Run Fat Boy Run. The quality was not good.
I reran it using the AppleTV Preset but turned 2-pass on and obviously left CQ alone. File size increased to 2.5 gig but quality was there.
I will be sticking with 2-pass but any other tweaks I would be interested in.
Anormorphic - Strict? Loose? Affect on file size?
Deinterlace? Benefits? Affect on file size?
Detelecine? Benefits? Affect on file size?
Things like that?
Nightstorm/Dynaflash:
First of all 0.9.3 rocks so thanks for the awesome program.
Currently I'm encoding with the universal preset. And as noted in the above postings, there is some quality loss, when compared to the old Apple TV setting (2500 abr) (but I don't know if i necessarily agree with this).
If I was to adjust the universal preset by adjusting the slider to 61%, and added decombing, would that break the univeral-ness of this preset?
I know that you probably can't give a definitive yes or no, but do you have a gut feeling if these two changes would have ramifications on iPhone playback? if so, do you think they would result in dropped frames on an iphone due to bitrate spikes or more likely an overall incompability with the iPhone?
Currently, I have an appletv and am getting an iPhone in Feb and am trying to encode things to work on both for when i do get the phone.
Thanks a ton for what i imagine is largely thankless programming as well as the software support.
First of all 0.9.3 rocks so thanks for the awesome program.
Currently I'm encoding with the universal preset. And as noted in the above postings, there is some quality loss, when compared to the old Apple TV setting (2500 abr) (but I don't know if i necessarily agree with this).
If I was to adjust the universal preset by adjusting the slider to 61%, and added decombing, would that break the univeral-ness of this preset?
I know that you probably can't give a definitive yes or no, but do you have a gut feeling if these two changes would have ramifications on iPhone playback? if so, do you think they would result in dropped frames on an iphone due to bitrate spikes or more likely an overall incompability with the iPhone?
Currently, I have an appletv and am getting an iPhone in Feb and am trying to encode things to work on both for when i do get the phone.
Thanks a ton for what i imagine is largely thankless programming as well as the software support.
This won't break compatibility with the iPhone, but it will result in larger files. I would also suggest turning on detelecine... I haven't had any negative side-effects of using both of these filters with all of my encodes, but I don't encode too many usunusal/problematic sources.That said, if there was a problem you'd see it in the playback on your AppleTV or computer. Good luck and enjoy!