Replicate Itunes Settings HD Movie Conversion?

[adeedew]

Hi, can't seem to find this anywhere but is there a simple way to replicate the settings Apple/Itunes uses to get a blur-ray quality HD Movie to the settings of what you'd purchase a 1080P HD movie on iTunes to? I have tried everything from handbrake, mp4tools, iflcks, smart converter and always end up with a 5-10gb file, am i doing something wrong? I have read apple/itunes HD is almost as good quality of a blu ray, how do they get that and still keep the file size under 4gb?
Thanks very much

 

[jayhawk11]

Hi, can't seem to find this anywhere but is there a simple way to replicate the settings Apple/Itunes uses to get a blur-ray quality HD Movie to the settings of what you'd purchase a 1080P HD movie on iTunes to? I have tried everything from handbrake, mp4tools, iflcks, smart converter and always end up with a 5-10gb file, am i doing something wrong? I have read apple/itunes HD is almost as good quality of a blu ray, how do they get that and still keep the file size under 4gb?
Thanks very much

They (Apple) compress the hell out of it. If you want to know what they do, try using the AppleTV 3 preset in Handbrake to encode a 50GB Blu-ray rip.

Then, do it again. This time, crank the RF to 22 or 23. The difference in quality becomes especially apparent in darker scenes.

 

[Sparced]

There's a user on a popular bit torrent site that has custom Handbrake settings that I've adopted. His username is tr108.

I don't have access to them now but he's shared them before and they work well.

 

[adeedew]

They (Apple) compress the hell out of it. If you want to know what they do, try using the AppleTV 3 preset in Handbrake to encode a 50GB Blu-ray rip.

Then, do it again. This time, crank the RF to 22 or 23. The difference in quality becomes especially apparent in darker scenes.

Thank you Jayhawk11. So do it twice in HB and change RF? And does it seem right a 30-50GB Blu-ray rip takes about 10-14 hours?! Seems so hit or miss, trying the same file over smart cover, Handbrake and flicks, get completely different results and length of times.

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There's a user on a popular bit torrent site that has custom Handbrake settings that I've adopted. His username is tr108.

I don't have access to them now but he's shared them before and they work well.

Thanks Sparced. I will try to google that, if you come across please share!

 

[dynaflash]

I have read apple/itunes HD is almost as good quality of a blu ray, how do they get that and still keep the file size under 4gb?

Um, you do realize that the iTunes content is not taken from a blu ray source ? The studio masters that are used as source for iTunes encodes are huge. You will *never* get your hand on their source material and even if you did. it would take days even on an i7. Given the quality of their source material they can compress it big time and still retain quality. Blu ray is already massively compressed and you are compressing it yet again.

 

[adeedew]

Um, you do realize that the iTunes content is not taken from a blu ray source ? The studio masters that are used as source for iTunes encodes are huge. You will *never* get your hand on their source material and even if you did. it would take days even on an i7. Given the quality of their source material they can compress it big time and still retain quality. Blu ray is already massively compressed and you are compressing it yet again.

Yup and i'm not interested in the source, just trying to get a blu-ray 20-30gb down to 5-7gb like iTunes with decent quality

 

[jayhawk11]

Yup and i'm not interested in the source, just trying to get a blu-ray 20-30gb down to 5-7gb like iTunes with decent quality

Like I said, from a 50GB Blu-ray rip, the ATV3 preset should get you into that area. If you wanted it more like what Apple provides from iTunes, use the ATV 3 preset but change the RF to be 21 or 22 (probably 21).

And yeah, it takes a while. On a quad-core i7 I usually get 12-14 FPS when converting using the ATV3 preset, so four hours to convert a two hour movie is pretty normal.

 

[mic j]

Like I said, from a 50GB Blu-ray rip, the ATV3 preset should get you into that area. If you wanted it more like what Apple provides from iTunes, use the ATV 3 preset but change the RF to be 21 or 22 (probably 21).

And yeah, it takes a while. On a quad-core i7 I usually get 12-14 FPS when converting using the ATV3 preset, so four hours to convert a two hour movie is pretty normal.

Not sure I understand what you are saying. Would you increase the RF setting (lower the quality) to 21 to produce more iTunes-like quality, file size or both?

 

[jayhawk11]

Not sure I understand what you are saying. Would you increase the RF setting (lower the quality) to 21 to produce more iTunes-like quality, file size or both?

Both. The RF essentially controls compression, and by extension, video quality and file size. The more compression, the smaller the file size and lower quality.

 

[dynaflash]

Yup and i'm not interested in the source, just trying to get a blu-ray 20-30gb down to 5-7gb like iTunes with decent quality

Not to be argumentative but that is exactly the point. you probably cannot get the same file size with the same quality as iTunes does *because* of the source you are using. The better the source the more you can compress it and still retain quality. That said you should get something close with the Hi Profile or the ATV 3 preset in the HB Nightlies.

 

[mic j]

Not to be argumentative but that is exactly the point. you probably cannot get the same file size with the same quality as iTunes does *because* of the source you are using. The better the source the more you can compress it and still retain quality. That said you should get something close with the Hi Profile or the ATV 3 preset in the HB Nightlies.

The aTV 3 preset is appearing in 0.9.6. It looks the same as the nightly with the exception that there is no 30fps cap. Is there a reason to use the NB over the 0.9.6?

 

[dynaflash]

The aTV 3 preset is appearing in 0.9.6. It looks the same as the nightly with the exception that there is no 30fps cap. Is there a reason to use the NB over the 0.9.6?

Well, if you installed the nightly and it updated its presets you would have the atv 3 preset even when you go back to 0.9.6. The presets are stored in a separate plist. Personally I use the nightly (actually I compile from source but basically same thing). If you want to use that preset stick with the nightly though as you noted besides the change in the capped frame rate (which your not going to need unless you have sources over 30 fps which is unlikely barring ota captures, etc.) 0.9.6 *should* work fine with the atv 3 preset. There are a few bugfixes since 0.9.6 and at some point there will be a 0.9.6 bugfix release.

 

[mic j]

Well, if you installed the nightly and it updated its presets you would have the atv 3 preset even when you go back to 0.9.6. The presets are stored in a separate plist. Personally I use the nightly (actually I compile from source but basically same thing). If you want to use that preset stick with the nightly though as you noted besides the change in the capped frame rate (which your not going to need unless you have sources over 30 fps which is unlikely barring ota captures, etc.) 0.9.6 *should* work fine with the atv 3 preset. There are a few bugfixes since 0.9.6 and at some point there will be a 0.9.6 bugfix release.

I figured that was the situation. Thanks for the info.

 

[adeedew]

Not to be argumentative but that is exactly the point. you probably cannot get the same file size with the same quality as iTunes does *because* of the source you are using. The better the source the more you can compress it and still retain quality. That said you should get something close with the Hi Profile or the ATV 3 preset in the HB Nightlies.

Thanks all for the help. The problem is handbrake makes a 10gb files while iVL makes a smaller files on the "highest" settings of video, i'll keep trying...HB seems to convert huge files, much larger than iTunes HD for purchase

 

[almonde]

Thanks all for the help. The problem is handbrake makes a 10gb files while iVL makes a smaller files on the "highest" settings of video, i'll keep trying...HB seems to convert huge files, much larger than iTunes HD for purchase

Whilst i understand what you're asking for, i don't think you're grasping the importance of the source material. The point is that HB is trying to encode the noise and artifacts in the BD Rip aswell as the video (it doesn't really know the difference i guess), and therefore that requires more data so the end result is a larger file for the same quality as Apple achieves, because their source is much cleaner.

For an example of this, rip an old move like Hitchcock's The Birds from DVD and the rip will be ~2.5gb, rip a movie with a similar level of action but newer and therefore with a much cleaner picture the rip will be about ~1.5gb.

 

[dynaflash]

Thanks all for the help. The problem is handbrake makes a 10gb files while iVL makes a smaller files on the "highest" settings of video, i'll keep trying...HB seems to convert huge files, much larger than iTunes HD for purchase

if your comparing HB to another encoder you *must* use the exact same source for each and the *exact* same settings. All of them. One RF point can make a huge difference in both size and quality. Everything would have to be the same. And I mean EXACTLY the same if you are looking to see which produces the best encode. I don't know what iVi uses for its actual encoder but HB's x264 encoder is frankly one of ... if not the best for encoding H.264 video, google will bear this out.

Edit: just checked ... iVi uses the HandBrakeCLI for encoding. Therefore it has to be the settings.