So I ripped the first 7 episodes of chuck from the blu-ray then ran the first one through handbrake and the file size is higher than original by about 1gb i have one 5.1 audio track and one stereo track both in aac 512 bitrate and forced only burn in subtitles because in some episode characters speak other languges i can not remember what episodes so i put forced only on all episodes just in case
here are the rest of my settings
these settings have worked fine before for other content
Those settings are very confused. You’re simultaneously encoding at higher average quality than the original bluray (which is kind of pointless) and with a lower maximum quality level…
CRF < 16 is pretty useless. The visual difference is extremely minimal, but the bitrate difference is huge. Depending on the source, the sweet spot is probably around 18 (personally, I never go higher than that). You still may end up with larger output than input at times though (at that point I just remux the original video).
Main Profile limits some choices in the encoder, and thus lowers efficiency, compared to High Profile. There’s also not a lot of good reasons to use Main instead of High at this point. You kind of have to go out of your way to find a device that doesn’t support at least High@L4.1.
Level 4.0 vs 4.1 basically just limits the max bitrate in the vcl. Main@L4 is limited to 20mb/s, Main@L4.1 is limited to 50mb/s. This may seem like a good thing, but if your content uses an average bitrate of less than <20mb/s, it’s nice that it can spike higher if need be to maintain the same average quality.
TL;DR: Your CRF is way too low, try 16 or even 18. Use High profile unless you have very good reason not to. Maybe consider Level 4.1, but this one is more subjective.
Also this is assuming live action material in the vein of Chuck as stated in the OP…
Agree with @tobytl, you definitely need to adjust things.
Suggest Variable Framerate instead of constant framerate. Using “Same as Source” and “Variable Framerate” ensures Handbrake sets the output file frame rate the same as the source material.
See Handbrake doc section on Frame Rate for details.
Set Constant Quality to 20 - 22 for Blu-rays and 18 - 20 for DVDs.
Increasing Constant Quality does not necessarily result in a better quality transcode. You quickly reach a point of diminishing returns going beyond settings suggested by Handbrake. Read the Handbrake docs about “x264 Recommended Quality RF Values” and “x264 and RF 0” in the Constant Quality vs Average Bit Rate section for more details.
See Handbrake docs on Constant Quality vs Average Bit Rate.
Suggest High@Level 4.0 for encoder profile/level, unless you need Main for compatibility with some devices.
Video on 1080p Blu-ray is High@4.1, and by transcoding w/ Handbrake you’re reducing the amount of bandwidth required.
Example: Video from recent blu-ray rip has a bit rate of 40.8 Mbps. The same movie, after processing by Handbrake, has a bit rate of 6.5 Mbps. The highest post-Handbrake bit rate movie I have is 16.4 Mbps, well within High @ 4.0 specifications.
VerySlow encoder preset is fine if you don’t mind the increased encoding time vs Medium or Fast. You’ll get better compression and smaller output files.
FWIW, I leave Encoder Tune set to None. I’ve experimented with it based on movie type. It didn’t seem to make a difference in quality, file size, bit rate, etc. Of course, that’s just me. YMMV.
