Thread: Best Quality Handbrake Settings for BRRips Re-Encoding

I've been Re-encoding Blu-Ray sources for along time in Handbrake & I remember when I wasn't really sure what options to use to maximize quality & compression. I thought I'd share what I've found to be the most important settings for High Quality/Compression. This Tutorial focuses on the advanced tab quality compression not bitrate or anything that is subjective to taste. They are based on my time spent in Handbrake forums back a few years ago in beta & were the Max "Sane" Values according to the author of handbrake's posts in the forums back then when I was active. Suposedly now adays CQ can acheive "as good quality as my 2pass encodes" & takes less time but the advanced compression settings here are still relevant. I will always use 2pass because I'm compressing for filesize sake (you can only fit so much video on one hard drive). If I have a 720p drama that has almost no action & no graphical artistic content I don't understand dedicating 4-8gb when I can't tell the difference at 1.5gb with max sane compression settings.

These settings I've used that keep almost max quality even with lower bitrates. For an example: A 720p rip at 1280x528 keeps almost all quality (if there's not tons of grainy snow or hd rainfall/waterfalls to encode) with only 1650 video bitrate & 160bit audio with these settings. The downside is it takes a long time to encode, around 6hrs, sometimes up to 10hrs at 1080p (times are with 3ghz dual core). If you want to play it safe use the preview feature or add a few hundred kbps.

**again, I know alot of encoding groups choose CQ instead of 2pass & go like 30% over max sane values to get less then 1% more quality but this is for those that want to pick the file size they want to give to a particular movie, also excuse the lamens terms, I'm trying to simplify this as much as possible**
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On Video Tab select 2pass & turbo first pass & desired bitrate (1800 is even fine with these settings at full 1280x720 resolution 16:9)





**On Advanced Tab**
Reference Frames - 6
Maximum B-Frames - 5
CABAC Entropy Coding - Yes
8x8 Transform - Yes
Weighted P-Frames - Yes
Pyramidal B-Frames - Normal
Adaptive B-Frames - Optimal
Adaptive Direct Mode - Spatial
Motion Estimation Method - UnevenMulti-Hexagon
Subpixel ME & Mode Decision - 9
Motion Estimation Range - 32
** click add button to save changes to a preset **

- Ref & B frames are the max sane values for normal content but if you have alot of computer animation you can set Max B-Frames to 6 or more if you want a little more quality per bitrate.
- Container Mp4 or Mkv doesn't have any bearing on Quality only Compatability, if you use iDevices or play it on different devices, I recommend mp4 with a single stereo audio track is very compatible.
- I've also found that Japanimation & older animation can lower Motion settings. I use 16 MErange, & 8 Motion Decision to speed up encode. You could also put UMH to hexegon in ME method.

(For DVD Video You may want to turn Video filters Detelecine & Decomb to Default if you want to remove interlacing & such)

Originally Posted by radesoft

Strobus,

Great post! I'm curious, do you have any suggestions for non-Blu-Ray sources? I've been trying to maximize my quality for a while and just can't seem to find a happy balance.

I use the same quality settings on Non BluRay sources also, the x264 codec doesn't discriminate it only sees video & compresses it down the same way no matter where that video came from, except the resolution is alot smaller so your bitrate should be also. Depending how big you want the file, I only use 950-1200kbps for SD content though. At the same time different video content benefits more or less with certain settings ea: B-frames & cgi. & Motion estimation from cutframe old cartoons that hardly have any movement obviously aren't as picky.

Ah yah, I forgot to mention. If the encoder of a source used very low ref frames & other lower quality rip settings, then much higher bitrate is needed for the same quality. I typically look for 8gb+ source for 1080p or 4gb+ on 720p. Sometimes they will post their rip settings. Now remember if it has black bars it is using less of the screen & has fewer pixels so you can do with less bitrate also, Use formula (width x hight pixels) 1280x720=921600 pixels on full screen 16:9 720p. & a 1280x528 (still 720p) but with black bars is 675840 pixels so thats almost 1/3 less pixels & both are 720p.

-also look for a gradient effect on dark or greys (are the first to show low bitrate effects on 2pass encoding anyway) . that & Blocking. there should be 0 of either on a good high GB source.

each container has its own standards, are you using mp4 or mkv container? With mkv it will accept more audio formats if your putting 2 different types of audio format you might want to use mkv. Also what audio are you choosing as the codec & mixdown? For mp4 you can try AAC (Core) if your on mac or AAC (faac) if your on pc, then chose dolby pro logic II for the mixdown & make sure its the only one listed in the dropdown. What is the source audio though, if it is also aac 2ch then you probably want to passthrough. Oh one other thing is the higher the ref frames & b-frames the more quality but the more cpu it uses supposedly (I've never had problem with speed yet) but as long as you have a dual core 2ghz or higher should be fine.

also you can do a test without encoding the whole thing by going to preview & choose like 10-30 seconds preview to see if its right first. Other then that I can't think of any reason why the sound would be out of sync from re-encoding unless the source had a problem. (I've had a 1 second pause from file error once make the rest of the movie behind once) but that was fixed from getting a better file source.

**I should note a disclaimer if your encoding to upload to a site you should use the source DVD or BluRay not another encode because you will always have better quality encoding from the full original source, If its for your personal collection you still might want at least a 8gb-12gb source**