Nobody has anything against different opinions, if they are at least substantiated. But WSA also thinks there is no global warming because it was cold the other day.
If only.
Guess you guys are right. 
Actually, the new Handbrake does āTargetā the Average Bit rate you choose, but if your scene requires more, itāll get more. That is why a 2 Pass Encode is so important when youāre ātankingā bit rates.
All my material, in as much as I can recall, is under 3750Kbps. I still donāt start to limit a stream until 12Mbps. My 3750s can peak well above that.
Lets say you have 1.6G (=1600MB) and the duration is 20mins (20*60=1200sec)
8 * 1600 / 1200 = 10.7 Mbps (Audio+Video)
Yeah, I agree that is pretty much. I did not work with DVD for a long time but I think I never had such a high bitrate. I think it should be ok to go down to about 3-5 Mbit/s but cannot guarantee that there will be no difference in quality at all. But the probability that you see difference is very low. You have to decide.
Only half the truth, as always. Also BluRays are already coded with such a setting. Max bitrates can reach more than 100 MBit/s here. And still one can find quality issues sometimes.
I think it is two. Me and one other you are not thinking about. But, however. 
Ah thanks.
In my example was this 1.6 GB file a episode with a duration from 40 mins. So: 8 * 1600 / (40 * 60) = 5.333 Mpbs. Means that I should use a bitrate from 5333? Or what does this 5.33 tell me exactly?
thanks,
Buhli
In HB I can choose between Constant and AVG Bit Rate. There you prfere the Constant where you can set a RF between 0 and 50?
Thanks
Buhli
Precisely.
That is a short estimation of your sources average bit rate. So you can go to Handbrake and set letās say bitrate of 5000 kbps. This is the easiest way of avoiding any loss of quality. You can also try 4000 and 3000. You will probably still see no difference in quality. But it just gets more likely.
I recommend the preset medium at least (slower is better). The transcoding will take more time but produce better quality at the same bitrate, the slower the preset is. For example Iām having a very powerful computer and donāt care that much for encoding time. Therefore I go with slow and let it run in the background and over night. Especially if you use higher bitrates (like 5000 here), preset fast should be ok, too. If you decide to set lower bitrate, like 3000, then take at least preset medium.
Hey admin_wilmaw
Thanks for your printscreen.
Yesterday I was able to test it with a avg bit rate of 5000 and it generated a 1.6 GB file which looks good at first glance.
I have one question more about the general HB settings.
Tab Filter:
Can I just accept the default settings here?
Tab Video:
Are these settings okay?
Iām not sure point 4 (Level) it is better a low or a high number?
Thanks and best regards Buhli
At first you should select a proper Encoder Preset. You have selected a 720p preset what does not match your DVD resolution. In your mediaInfo Screenshot you can find a video resolution of 720x576 and so you need a 576p preset (480p, 576p, 720p, 1080p, 2160p always refers to the height of the image). For example you could take the Matroska -> H264 MKV 576p preset.
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About filtering:
The filter settings are mainly important if you work with source material of less quality. For example, if you have blocking artifacts, you can try to filter them with the deblocking filter. Basically there is always a trade-off with other image properties. The deblocking filter removes blocking artifacts, but it also acts as a softener, so fine details may be lost. The same applies to the deinterlace filter with interlace artifacts. The Sharpen filter, on the other hand, emphasizes details, but may cause artifacts. The default settings are optimal for most cases. Personally, I hardly ever change anything because I only work with BluRay now anyway.
But you might be able to polish up the image of your DVDs a bit. To do so, turn off the deinterlace filter and have a look at a short test encode. Interlacing, unlike other artifacts, is permanent. So if you donāt see any in your short test sequence, it should be ok for the whole DVD without filter. You can also try a light Sharpen filter. LapSharp is better than UnSharp, but slower. As a preset I wouldnāt go beyond Light. Depends on the footage.
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Video settings:
I noticed with the 2 that you should only switch on the Turbo First Pass if you want it to go really fast. Otherwise it works against your slow preset setting. In my picture above it was only on by mistake, sorry.
The profiles summarize certain limits in which the coder settings have to be. Basically this is about player compatibility. 4.0 already allows a very good quality with very good compatibility. Other profiles may allow better quality, but they canāt be played everywhere. Actually I always stick to 4.0.
(For example, if you want to encode a 4K movie in H264, you would have to use at least profile 5.1. But donāt do that. For 4K films you should use H265).
Thank you for your detailed explanation.
Maybe a stupid question, but what happens if I use the wrong resolution? If I would choose 1080p?
Thank you, this was one of my follow questions, then I will take one of this mkv presets.
I will try this.
Okay thank you. But the other settings are okay? Iām a bit confused about the BpS (1). When I choose the āH264 MKV 576pā preset, itās changed this value to 25. Can I keep this setting? Or its better I choose āSame as sourceā?
Sorry I have again a question to the determine the bitrate. I have one episode with a duration of 40 mins and there I set a bitrate of 5000 and got a file with a size of 1600MB. If I have a other episode with a duration of 20mins. Is it better to work with the same bitrate? Or is it better to work with the same filesize?
Thanks and best regards Buhli
On PAL DVDs, this is the correct picture rate, because PAL uses 50 interlaced pictures per second. If you de-interlace this, you get 25 (progressive) pictures per second. (OK, some ppl prefer to try and encode 50 pictures per second after de-interlacing. But that makes the files incompatible with lots of older devices.)
If you pick āsame as sourceā, you will get 25 fps progressive output as well.
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If you encode on a higher resolution, you are offering a larger solution space than needed and used. This will simply result in larger files without any visible difference (Well, in particular you could see differences if dot borders no longer match to the border positions of the source. But thatās more a theoretical thing. Not really notable unless you compare single pixels)
But the question is not stupid, itās actually quite smart. If you think e.g. on sampling a signal you need to take sampling frequency larger than 2 times signal frequency in order to guarantee a mathematical lossless reconstruction of the signal. It is called Niquist Shannon Theorem. But it does not really matter here.
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You should stick to the same average bitrate for the whole series or at least for a season. Then you will get a relatively constant quality. As Otto explained above, there is actually a Constant Quality Factor CRF for this. In principle it is better suited for this, thatās true. But the problem is that the factor is always relative to the source. Good if you have lossless master material. Bad with already highly compressed material like from a DVD or BluRay. Typically, movies and individual episodes of a series are compressed differently to fit on the disc. So this factor gives you consistent quality just for a single file. You would have to check each episode of your series to see if the value still fits. I did this sometimes in the beginning. But it takes a lot of time and is really no fun. And if you just take one and the same factor for all the episodes, the quality varies a lot between episodes. You can see that in the average bitrate that comes out. It often varies up to 50% and more. Thatās why I personally think it makes more sense in practice to set an average bitrate. But there are quite different opinions here.
To put it very simply: Constant Quality Factor provides a very good constant quality for a single episode / movie but a bad consistency between different episodes and movies.
Average Bitrate still provides a good constant quality for one single episode / movie but also a good consistency between different episodes / movies.
Hey OttoKerner, Thanks for your explanation
Hey admin_wilmaw, thanks for your explanation.
If I understand you correctly you recommend more the Average Bitrate, right? But ones confuse me still a bit between Constant and Avergage.
HB write: HandBrake Documentation ā Constant Quality vs Average Bit Rate)%20to%20meet%20it.
- With the average bitrate, you control the size of the output file but give up control over the videoās quality.
- Constant quality mode does the opposite; you specify a quality level and HandBrake adjusts the bitrate (that is, the size) to meet it.
Doesnāt that mean that I achieve a better quality with Constant? With the average bitrate I can only be sure my episodes has always the same/similar size?
Edit:
I understand your explanation, Its bad if I have highly compressed material like from a DVD or BluRay.
I try to write a bit more clear:
Case 1: I have two different tv shows but both have similar episode duration (40 mins). Can I use for both tv shows the same bitrate (5000)Or it is possible I must use different bitrates for each show?
Case 2: Again two tv shows (The Big Bang Theory and Smallville) Big bang has an episode duration of 20 mins and smallville 40min. Can I here also use the same bitrate (5000)?
Sorry, I know Iām not the smartest guy
Thanks and best regards Buhli
I actually donāt wanna use the word bullshit again. But it is at least poorly formulated. Reading this, one could think that file size and quality are independent from each other. But they are not. They are directly related to each other via compression. The only reason for compressing a video is to save space / bandwidth but doing so you loose quality.
Therefore a higher data rate tends to lead to better quality. So you control both file size and quality via the data rate / bitrate. And you also control both via a constant quality setting. But you cannot automatically say that a bitrate of 3750 kbps has a very good quality. Sometimes it may be ok, sometimes not. (But to be honest, 3750 is REALLY low for 1080p content) Thatās the point why I criticized the statements of JuiceWSA and I think thatās what the people from Handbrake actually wanted to say.
The next problem is that the Constant Quality setting can also not give an absolute statement about the quality of transcodes from different source material. I tried to explain this in my last post. One movie needs a quality factor of 14 to look good while the next one looks top with 22. Constant Quality Setting only works as long as you have equally compressed source material. In your series, however, each episode on the DVD is already compressed to a greater or lesser extent so that everything fits on one disc.
Thatās why I recommend setting an average bitrate at the end of the day, especially for series. If itās high enough, the quality is high enough.
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You should first choose the bitrate regardless of how long an episode lasts. This is only important if you want the file to have a certain size at the end.
Different series / movies are shot with different equipment, have been edited differently or the images differ in light, color, saturation, motion. Therefore you might have to adjust the bitrate for a different series. Animated movies and series tend to be good with a lower bitrate. I think on average you can reach 50 % lower bitrate before it gets ugly.
In the end, no absolute and general statements and numbers are actually feasible for both bitrate and constant quality factor. One can actually only make sth. like trend statements or give approximate ranges depending on the resolution. My range for DVD is 3-5 Mbps, for 1080p BluRays it is 8-12 Mbps, etc.
Holy crap, I always think donāt write that much and then I end up like this
Hey admin_wilmaw
Thank you for your explanation again. I think slowly I understand 
No, I am very happy and grateful for it. Thank you to everyone here who shares their experiences and knowledge with me / us.
You wrote a few days ago:
I did the example with the created mkv file by MakeMKV which had a size of 1.6GB. This 1.6 GB mkv file has now the orginal qualitiy, right? Is this quality also the best posible qualitiy too? Can I say, when I create with HB a file which is bigger as this 1.6GB its more or less wasting of space?
Why do I ask that. I thought about it, if these statements are correct, I could first create a mkv file with MakeMKV and form this I can calculate the avergate bitrate for HB.
What do you think of this? If you think its not a bad idea, what you would recoomend to me. How many episodes I should create first by MakeMKV? One file for the whole tv show? Or one for each season? Or one for each disc?
Thanks and best regards Buhli
