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High Quality vs AppleTV Preset

P

Phil22

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 29, 2009
78
5
Hi All

Quick question. I recently got the new AppleTV to replace my ageing first generation. So I decided to re-convert some of my DVDs which are in the AppleTV preset to the high quality to get a more faithful copy of the original DVD. Just converted cowboys and aliens, however, the size of the high quality rip is smaller than the previous first generation one (1.26GB and 1.32GB respectively). Am I doing something wrong? I would have assumed the high quality preset would have produced a larger file size as it should be of higher quality? Anyone have any thoughts?

Cheers
 
Have you watched it? I would, just to check and see if they are any better/worse. But I would also imagine higher quality would = larger file size..
 
Phil22 said:
Hi All

Quick question. I recently got the new AppleTV to replace my ageing first generation. So I decided to re-convert some of my DVDs which are in the AppleTV preset to the high quality to get a more faithful copy of the original DVD. Just converted cowboys and aliens, however, the size of the high quality rip is smaller than the previous first generation one (1.26GB and 1.32GB respectively). Am I doing something wrong? I would have assumed the high quality preset would have produced a larger file size as it should be of higher quality? Anyone have any thoughts?

Cheers
Click to expand...
The point of the High Profile preset is to produce the best quality encode using the smallest possible file size. So yes, it is not unusual to generate a smaller file size using that preset. The price you pay is for that "more for less" is significant transcoding time.
 
mic j said:
The point of the High Profile preset is to produce the best quality encode using the smallest possible file size. So yes, it is not unusual to generate a smaller file size using that preset. The price you pay is for that "more for less" is significant transcoding time.
Click to expand...

That is a very nice way to explain it, thank you. I did not know that.

I've just been using the AppleTV 2 profile, which I hope is decent enough.
 
Ok so in your experience is it not worth re-encoding my AppleTV files to High profile?

I had a quick comparison between the two and I can't really see much of a difference for films. The AppleTV preset must be better than I had originally given it credit for.
 
Phil22 said:
Ok so in your experience is it not worth re-encoding my AppleTV files to High profile?

I had a quick comparison between the two and I can't really see much of a difference for films. The AppleTV preset must be better than I had originally given it credit for.
Click to expand...

The bottom line is quality is subjective. Some people can see the smallest defect and it will annoy them to no end. Others don't notice anything wrong. If you aren't seeing anything that bothers you from your current encodes, don't waste a lot of time redoing things. But you might want to do future transcodes at High Profile. Sort of a future proofing, I guess. But even that approach is dependent upon how many transcodes you do at a time and the extra time needed using the High Profile setting. Or you might want to transcode using the aTV preset in general and only use High Profile on certain files that the aTV preset yields an unsatisfactory result or you want to "archive" the movie at the highest possible quality.

It really comes down to your personal preferences and workflow needs.
 
Ok thanks very much for the input.

Think I will do future encodes at high profile but just leave my previous rips as they are.

Cheers
 
High Profile will yield a tighter (smaller) file size at a given average bit rate but the trade-off is significantly higher processing time. I wouldn't bother. If you want to be fancy just do all future encodes High Profile; You won't gain very much at all by re-doing all your older rips. If they are DVD you would be better off going to Blu-Ray and getting MUCH better quality before worrying about High Profile vs AppleTV vs whatever preset in Handbrake. Just my opinion.
 
Thanks for the input chaps. Yes I have thought about starting to convert some blurays but it just seems like a lot more work compared to DVDs. Am I right in thinking that getting subtitles is a real a pain for blurays? (this would be on a windows machine)
 
Phil22 said:
Thanks for the input chaps. Yes I have thought about starting to convert some blurays but it just seems like a lot more work compared to DVDs. Am I right in thinking that getting subtitles is a real a pain for blurays? (this would be on a windows machine)
Click to expand...
It's really not more work if you are using MakeMKV to do the initial rip. You didn't mention what you used to create the file you feed to HB. Takes longer, though as you are talking 5 vs 35GB file sizes.

I don't have experience with subtitles on the Windows side of things but this link (http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-159962.html) might give you some options to try.

Here's another good place to look for options and what's involved for subtitles. http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/209730-How-do-I-convert-DVD-or-sub-idx-to-text-srt-subtitles

And another more recent link: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/333581-How-to-extract-srt-from-mkv-file
 
Last edited:
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