Will 720p .mkv still be 720p after handbrake conversion

[jeb1]

Hi,
so I have a new mac and am about to start building my High def films library to watch on mac and future proof them for my future apple tv. My question is if I convert a 720p mkv with handbrake will it still be 720p quality after converting it and what would be the best setting to use to achieve this? Appologies if im asking an already asked question but I can't seem to find the answer Nywhere on here. Feel free to move me if I'm repeat posting.
No doubt that by the time I have got my apple tv they will be supporting 1080 and I'll have to start again lol
thanks in advance for your help

 

[sven-]

Why would you want to convert a 720p .mkv file with Handbrake? Do you want your AppleTV to support and be able to play the file? The AppleTV supports 720p, so no conversion is needed, except for the fact that you're stuck with that .mkv container.

Luckily you can change the container from .mkv to .mov (one of the containers supported by the AppleTV) easily by opening the .mkv file in QuickTime (you must have Perian installed to do this), and after it has loaded 100%, saving it as a self-contained video file.

Of course, converting the whole file with Handbrake works at well, but you lose quality (every conversion reduces the quality) and the conversion takes a lot of time.

 

[geoffreak]

I'll add to what sven said by saying that that process will only work if the video stream is low complexity H264 and the audio AAC.
If you want to preserve quality and still watch on the ATV, just use Handbrake's ATV preset and keep the original file. It requires more HD space, but you save the quality video for watching off the ATV.

 

[eddyg]

720p does not imply any sort of quality. You can easily over-compress a 720p title so that it is a lot worse than SD.

Resolution is not the be all and end all.

That said. In HB if you tell it to keep the same resolution, it will. The next thing to worry about is framerate, which you need to keep under 25fps, and bitrate which needs to be limited to under about 5Mbps to work on an ATV. You also need to avoid any high complexity options.

Cheers Ed