can somebody explain constant quality

[suspect9]

Hello All

Nob questions here about the constant quality scale in Handbrake. I understand that the appleTV option has a preset of 59%. I had played around with this for making my DVD rips smaller.

However I am going to start ripping some of TV series DVD's (Thunderbirds etc) and I do not want to compress(?) the files. Do I leave constant quality on 100%? The handbrake guide states it should never be above 80%.

Any advice welcome

Cheers

 

[MacBoobsPro]

Hello All

Nob questions here about the constant quality scale in Handbrake. I understand that the appleTV option has a preset of 59%. I had played around with this for making my DVD rips smaller.

However I am going to start ripping some of TV series DVD's (Thunderbirds etc) and I do not want to compress(?) the files. Do I leave constant quality on 100%? The handbrake guide states it should never be above 80%.

Any advice welcome

Cheers

I dont bother with constant quality. I set the average bitrate at 2500kbps (good quality) and let it do its thing.

 

[Thomss]

I did about 120 of my DVD's in the above way!
then got a nice config with 59% constant quality and my files are all MUCH smaller and look even better!

so of course I've been re-doing a load of my movies again... but so far I've gained a LOAD of hard drive space back on my drives

the only time I use constant is if it's from a HD MKV etc...



TRY IT!

 

[MacBoobsPro]

I did about 120 of my DVD's in the above way!
then got a nice config with 59% constant quality and my files are all MUCH smaller and look even better!

so of course I've been re-doing a load of my movies again... but so far I've gained a LOAD of hard drive space back on my drives

the only time I use constant is if it's from a HD MKV etc...



TRY IT!

I would if HB didnt constantly crash on me since I updated 0.9.3 (or whatever the latest version is). I noticed the new ATV preset had changed to 59% constant in the update. Once they fix the crashes I will give it a go.

 

[NightStorm]

Hello All

Nob questions here about the constant quality scale in Handbrake. I understand that the appleTV option has a preset of 59%. I had played around with this for making my DVD rips smaller.

However I am going to start ripping some of TV series DVD's (Thunderbirds etc) and I do not want to compress(?) the files. Do I leave constant quality on 100%? The handbrake guide states it should never be above 80%.

Any advice welcome

Cheers

No, do not set CQ to 100%... the result will be very large files (larger than the source) that look no better than the original. I'd recommend keeping it at 59%, however older TV shows with a lot of noise/artifacts can lead to the encoder using more bits than it really needs to use to preserve quality. In those situations, you'd want to lower it a bit to compensate.

All of my DVD encodes are done at 59%. Bluray/HDDVD are 57% (with the exception of BSG S1 HDDVD which are encoded at 55% due to the god awful quality found on these discs).

 

[rWally]

Hello All

Nob questions here about the constant quality scale in Handbrake. I understand that the appleTV option has a preset of 59%. I had played around with this for making my DVD rips smaller.

However I am going to start ripping some of TV series DVD's (Thunderbirds etc) and I do not want to compress(?) the files. Do I leave constant quality on 100%? The handbrake guide states it should never be above 80%.

Any advice welcome

Cheers

Once you start getting above 62% or so (depending on the source) you'll be very hard pressed to notice a difference between the rip and the original DVD. Compressing the file doesn't really cost you much in terms of picture quality but it saves you a ton of space on the HD so give it a try.

 

[d21mike]

I was using "custom" HiRes iPod setting in 0.9.2 with 1500 (up from 1000 and I wanted to play on iPhone and AppleTV). When I upgraded to 0.9.3 I notice everything was based on 59% (iPhone Preset and AppleTV Prest (which was 2500) so I assumed it must be better so I change to using 59% and the file size was much smaller. However, with my testing I noticed the quality of the movie I tested with was much less (then the 1500). Maybe it was due to the movie or maybe it was due to only a the first part of the movie (only tested with only 2 chapters). In any case I swithed back to 1500 because I was happy with everything that I already encoded.

 

[Rich1963]

Remember something else. The whole point of using Handbrake, besides the converison to .m4v, is to use the excellent compression characteristics of X264 to compress and achieve little to no degradation of the source.

There was a thread running over on Handbrake's forums awhile back (I think about AppleTV settings post RDO) where 3 screen shots were posted; 1 with the original DVD source, one with handbrake .9.2, and one using all of the AppleTV-accepted X264 compression bells and whistles, and most viewers felt that the .9.3 conpression running at a CQ of 62% was the best looking.

I encoded a DVD over the weekend and watched it back on a Samsung 1080p 50" plasma, and was truly impressed with the conversion. And this is after encoding 350 DVDs already. Trust me. Use CQ fo 62% as well as the settings listed in that Handbrake thread, and you won't be disappointed. The Handbrake team deserves a pat on the back. I'd buy them a beer if they were local.