New Version of Handbrake

[gnasher729]

Very nice.

I can't decide whether I like Handbrake or Mac the Ripper better. I've kind of been using them both.

I always, always use them both together.

First, Mac The Ripper is better at reading the contents of DVDs. There are quite a few DVDs out there with nasty copy protection that Handbrake cannot read.

But more important to me, using Mac The Ripper puts much less strain on the DVD drive. If you rip a movie to H.264, in best quality with 2-pass encoding, it takes about 2 1/2 hours on a MacBook for every hour of movie. And your DVD drive is running all the time. With Mac The Ripper, the time reading the DVD is much much shorter.

The other thing is, using Mac The Ripper I can let Handbrake rip several DVDs overnight. I use Mac The Ripper to copy three or four DVDs onto the harddisk, then start Handbrake and it rips overnight (and usually the next day while I'm at work). Can't do that without Mac The Ripper because you would have to swap DVDs.

 

[gnasher729]

Not quite. It uses about 155% so I still have about 5-10% left overall.

EDIT: That's on a 2.0GHz Core Duo MBP

It depends. If you rip directly from DVD, and you don't use the most expensive encoding (H.264), then you may be limited by the rate at which the data can be read from the DVD, and you don't need more than 155%. I always encode from harddisk, and usually Handbrake is at 190%, with other programs taking the rest.

All the time my MacBook is absolutely usable; I don't think you even notice the difference except for the noise from the fan. Other operations are not slowed down a bit. H.264 encoding gives higher priorities to other tasks, so I can manage to play three H.264 quicktime movies at the same time as encoding with Handbrake, and all play smooth - Handbrake just reduces its CPU usage.

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

It depends. If you rip directly from DVD, and you don't use the most expensive encoding (H.264), then you may be limited by the rate at which the data can be read from the DVD, and you don't need more than 155%. I always encode from harddisk, and usually Handbrake is at 190%, with other programs taking the rest.

Yeah, I was using other programs at the same time. But since I use the h.264 encoding, the DVD drive is by no mean the limiting factor.


Does anybody use the anamorphic option to encode their videos? If so, what are the advantages you get from that over square pixels?

 

[gnasher729]

Yeah, I was using other programs at the same time. But since I use the h.264 encoding, the DVD drive is by no mean the limiting factor.


Does anybody use the anamorphic option to encode their videos? If so, what are the advantages you get from that over square pixels?

Just finished encoding "Lord of the Rings". Picture quality is excellent.

The advantage is a bit hard to explain, but I'll try: You buy a DVD, and the movie is for example in 2.35 : 1 format. At least that's what it looks like. In reality, all DVDs are either in 1.5 : 1 format (NTSC) at 720 x 480 pixels or in 1.33 : 1 format (PAL) at 720 x 576 pixels. That movie in 2.35 : 1 format has been squashed together to 1.5 : 1 format (if you are in the USA) and written to the DVD. Your DVD player reads the movie in 1.5 : 1 format, and then stretches it back to its right shape.

Without the anamorphic option, Handbrake creates a movie in 2.35 : 1 format, that would be 720 x 306 pixels. Your DVD contained 720 x 480 pixels, that means 36 percent of the pixels are just thrown away! With the anamorphic option, Handbrake can create a movie in exactly the same format as on the DVD. No pixels are thrown away. When the movie is played, Quicktime detects that it doesn't have the right shape and stretches it automatically. So if you play that movie in fullscreen, it isn't scaled from 720 x 306 pixels to full screen, but from 720 x 480 pixels to full screen, with much better picture quality.

Disadvantage: iPods can't play these movies, they come out squashed. So this is for people who want to play movies on their computer.

 

[Blazer5913]

Are there any quick guides/ instructions to perform this anamorphic procedure? It really sounds like something that would help me out because I want to be playing these videos at full/max resolution on either my computer or ATV... Thanks, any help would be great!

 

[imacdaddy]

Are there any quick guides/ instructions to perform this anamorphic procedure? It really sounds like something that would help me out because I want to be playing these videos at full/max resolution on either my computer or ATV... Thanks, any help would be great!

Actually its in "Picture Settings" at the bottom right. Click on it to bring up the screen. Check "Anamorphic".

 

[imacdaddy]

Without the anamorphic option, Handbrake creates a movie in 2.35 : 1 format, that would be 720 x 306 pixels. Your DVD contained 720 x 480 pixels, that means 36 percent of the pixels are just thrown away! With the anamorphic option, Handbrake can create a movie in exactly the same format as on the DVD. No pixels are thrown away. When the movie is played, Quicktime detects that it doesn't have the right shape and stretches it automatically. So if you play that movie in fullscreen, it isn't scaled from 720 x 306 pixels to full screen, but from 720 x 480 pixels to full screen, with much better picture quality.

In other words, you should aways select anamorphic option if you're watching it on the tv, yes? I don't really care about watching movies on my iMac or iPod anymore. Tv serves its purpose.

 

[BornAgainMac]

This is the only kind of application that I use that I need more speed using my Powermac G5. All my games and applications are fast enough. When it can use all the cores provided on the high-end Macs, I'll upgrade my hardware.

 

[piltupso]

I am new to handbrake but wanted to give it a try. I didn't know what to do with the setting so I just left them default. I let it run for 2 hours and it was still only 30% done with an avg fps of 11 is this to be expected on a Mac Pro 2.66? I was watching activity monitor off and on and it wasn't maxing my resources. Any thing I should check or tweak?




ok so my own post got me thinking, I went Handbrake to encode a movie I had already ripped to my HD with Mac the Ripper with the same settings I used before and it was flying with a avg fps of about 63 and a much higher utilization of my multiple cores. So is it the speed optical drive killing me?

 

[killr_b]

YES! The new version keeps chapter markers!

I may go back and re-encode a lot.

 

[gnasher729]

I am new to handbrake but wanted to give it a try. I didn't know what to do with the setting so I just left them default. I let it run for 2 hours and it was still only 30% done with an avg fps of 11 is this to be expected on a Mac Pro 2.66? I was watching activity monitor off and on and it wasn't maxing my resources. Any thing I should check or tweak?




ok so my own post got me thinking, I went Handbrake to encode a movie I had already ripped to my HD with Mac the Ripper with the same settings I used before and it was flying with a avg fps of about 63 and a much higher utilization of my multiple cores. So is it the speed optical drive killing me?

Something is wrong there. Yes, if you have a very powerful machine, speed will be limited by the DVD speed. However, 11 fps cannot be right because your DVD drive _must_ be capable to read at 25 frames per second, otherwise you could never watch a movie.

There are two possibilities: 1. The DVD that you tried had some horrible copy protection scheme and Mac The Ripper handles it better. After all, that is all that Mac The Ripper does: Copying DVDs with or without copy protection to your computer. 2. You were running two programs reading the DVD at the same time, and the DVD doesn't like that at all. For example, if both Mac The Ripper and Handbrake or both DVD player and Handbrake try to read the same DVD at the same time, both will slow down to a crawl.

 

[joshysquashy]

Just finished encoding "Lord of the Rings". Picture quality is excellent.

The advantage is a bit hard to explain, but I'll try: You buy a DVD, and the movie is for example in 2.35 : 1 format. At least that's what it looks like. In reality, all DVDs are either in 1.5 : 1 format (NTSC) at 720 x 480 pixels or in 1.33 : 1 format (PAL) at 720 x 576 pixels. That movie in 2.35 : 1 format has been squashed together to 1.5 : 1 format (if you are in the USA) and written to the DVD. Your DVD player reads the movie in 1.5 : 1 format, and then stretches it back to its right shape.

Without the anamorphic option, Handbrake creates a movie in 2.35 : 1 format, that would be 720 x 306 pixels. Your DVD contained 720 x 480 pixels, that means 36 percent of the pixels are just thrown away! With the anamorphic option, Handbrake can create a movie in exactly the same format as on the DVD. No pixels are thrown away. When the movie is played, Quicktime detects that it doesn't have the right shape and stretches it automatically. So if you play that movie in fullscreen, it isn't scaled from 720 x 306 pixels to full screen, but from 720 x 480 pixels to full screen, with much better picture quality.

Disadvantage: iPods can't play these movies, they come out squashed. So this is for people who want to play movies on their computer.

What about if you encoded to a size of 1128 x 480 pixels? this would be essentially doing the same as quicktime does in stretching it out. the disadvantage would be larger file sizes, the advantage would be compatibility.

i don't see why dvd's are encoded like this, surely it is worse quality by being squished and then stretched?

 

[eddyg]

Use the Apple TV Preset for Handbrake

In other words, you should aways select anamorphic option if you're watching it on the tv, yes? I don't really care about watching movies on my iMac or iPod anymore. Tv serves its purpose.

Hi,

Use the Apple TV preset in the presets sidebar on the left. It will turn on
Anamorphic (which really does improve quality a lot). And it will shift the
bit rates up to what Apple TV can handle.

I've been using this version of Handbrake for a while (I compile it myself from the source). And I can say that it is very good and very stable. The chapter markers do work in Apple TV and in iTunes. In iTunes you should be getting an extra menu appear called Chapters with all the chapters in it so you can jump to them.

In AppleTV just click the forward and backward to jump to the next chapter.

There were still a couple of issues with sound dropping for a few ms during chapter transitions, there is a fix, I'm not sure if it was committed before the newest binary release or not.

As to workflow, always use MTR for ripping the DVD, it does null cell handling. And then use Handbrake to compress to a single usable H.264 file. I setup a queue with a number of tasks to run overnight.

Cheers, Ed.

What about if you encoded to a size of 1128 x 480 pixels? this would be essentially doing the same as quicktime does in stretching it out. the disadvantage would be larger file sizes, the advantage would be compatibility.

i don't see why dvd's are encoded like this, surely it is worse quality by being squished and then stretched?

DVDs do stretch. They start off at 720 x 480 and end up at 1024x432 (depending an the aspect ratio of the film).

There is no disadvantage to anamorphic for playing on your computer or AppleTV, you only get better quality due to more vertical resolution.

No matter how you do this you are always stretching the horizontal picture. That's how it is encoded on the DVD for anamorphic presentations.

Cheers, Ed.

 

[Krevnik]

I saw the chapter makers too, hoped that they would enable the video to have chapters automatically put in for quicktime use. Not sure what this feature actually does.

Does exactly what you expect it to do... there is another addition going in real soon to SVN which will improve it. Seems the chapter markers are about a half-second off from where they should be, and you can't name them (but you will in the next release).

 

[ezekielrage_99]

Still can't download it off the Handbrake or Versiontracker sties.....


Try http://mihd.net/5mnzb9

 

[illegalprelude]

with Handbrake. What setting are you guys using to have a god quality?

 

[eddyg]

with Handbrake. What setting are you guys using to have a god quality?

Use the AppleTV preset, it looks great on AppleTV.

Basically:

H.264 Main
Video bitrate 2500
Audio bitrate 128 Dobly ProLogic II
Anamorphic with Chapter Markers

I don't use 2-pass encoding, takes long enough to encode as-is.

Cheers, Ed.

 

[chibianh]

I'm on a Mac Pro 2.66 and it's running all 4 cores, averaging about 300% processor usage.

 

[eddyg]

This is the only kind of application that I use that I need more speed using my Powermac G5. All my games and applications are fast enough. When it can use all the cores provided on the high-end Macs, I'll upgrade my hardware.

It has been able to for ages. I'm not sure where you've been hiding

I can see an 8 core Mac Pro in your future

 

[Blazer5913]

Just a quick questions about this new Handbrake... Will checking 2-pass on the Apple TV preset box make the quality better / bigger file sizes? I just want my encoded DVD's looking as good as possible when playing them... Also, does this option enable the 5.1 surround sound option? Thanks

 

[eddyg]

Just a quick questions about this new Handbrake... Will checking 2-pass on the Apple TV preset box make the quality better / bigger file sizes? I just want my encoded DVD's looking as good as possible when playing them... Also, does this option enable the 5.1 surround sound option? Thanks

Same file size, slightly better quality as 2-pass gets to peek ahead using the first pass to decide how to compress.

Cheers, Ed.

 

[Blazer5913]

Yeah, I'm just so hesitant to start this whole ripping thing as I have over 200 DVD's that I will need to rip and want to rip them all at the absolute highest quality possible so I can have beautiful copies of them for the future. I will be getting an Apple TV and using this primarily, so would you guys recommend using the Apple TV settings? I guess that setting already takes care of all the ANAMORPHIC stuff right? And it also has chapter, 5.1 surround sound, and great quality. I will do the 2-pass option as well, just to ensure the absolute highest quality, but are there any other things I should be noting before I start this task? Thanks alot

 

[imacdaddy]

but are there any other things I should be noting before I start this task? Thanks alot

I'm in the same boat as you. I've noticed that some of my older DVD's need "deinterlace" option checked. I would choose and encode a short chapter of the movie just to see if I need to deinterlace or not. Now I'm thinking to always check this option while encoding. Anyone suggest otherwise?

 

[macenforcer]

I downloaded the new handbrake. I use the standard settings but change the bitrate to 1600 instead of 1000 and the movie comes out great. 1.3gb for a 1hr48 minute movie.

 

[gnasher729]

I'm in the same boat as you. I've noticed that some of my older DVD's need "deinterlace" option checked. I would choose and encode a short chapter of the movie just to see if I need to deinterlace or not. Now I'm thinking to always check this option while encoding. Anyone suggest otherwise?

That's a bad move. Deinterlacing is good and important when you have interlaced video material. But on progressive material (newer DVDs) it reduces the quality quite a bit. That happens especially with thin horizontal lines and edges. A good deal of information is just thrown away. It might not make much differences if you encode for an iPod with low resolution, because that information has to be thrown anyway, but if you want to watch a film on your computer, it is bad.

Instead of rendering a whole chapter, just check more than one of the pictures in the picture dialog. On a picture with lots of movement you can see clearly whether you need deinterlacing or not.