Handbrake settings to preserve DVD quality

General Discussions
1

I know there have been a few discussions here about the ideal settings for Handbrake. I’ve been messing around with the different options in the software to see what various results are produced.

My goal is to preserve the exact (or as close as possible) quality to the source DVD.

I also want any forced subtitles to default on WITHOUT asking Handbrake to burn them in. I have been able to successfully make this happen when playing the output file with VLC Media Player but Plex doesn’t recognize the “Default” command.

As of right now I’m using VBR - 4000kbps Average - 2 Pass Encoding - Placebo speed - Film profile. Audio is always AC3 passthrough.

To encode one 2 hour movie with these settings using an Intel Xeon processor that has a 10000+ benchmark rating, it takes 24 hours… That’s a little longer than I would like.

So I thought I would see if anyone else has tried to accomplish this and what settings you use.

File size is not an issue. Hard drives are cheap.

2

Frankly, the placebo bit rates for DVDs are just that - placebo. IMO, for DVDs, anything over 2200Kbps is a waste of time and disk space, but I make those assumptions based solely on the eyeballs in my head. Your eyeballs may be able to see something different. Mine are high mileage.

However, here are my personal Handbrake settings in a rather detailed guide for Direct Play across many devices for use in Plex. This guide covers DVDs with the proper anamorphic settings and for BluRay rips where no anamorphic settings are required. Feel free to tweek as you see fit and add your comments as well as your own settings:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1335697/#Comment_1335697
Note: I do NOT use 2 pass. That is pure madness, IMO.

BTW at my settings and with these eyeballs my resulting files are indistinguishable from the source DVDs and a standard Movie runs to completion on my AMD FX-8350 - Benchmark 8938 - in roughly 40 minutes. Standard TV Episodes complete in 12-15 minutes. HD material, of course takes longer. 1080p Movies complete in 90 minutes (+/-) and TV Show episodes in under an hour certainly.

As for Subs, I rarely use them, but when I do need some English for Foreign bits only I always use side car SRTs in UTF-8 and nothing EVER requires transoding. I simply will not tolerate transcoding. Plex makes poor decisions in that regard and if any poor decisions are to be made I’d rather make them myself. :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Awesome response! So do you use VBR or CBR?

I always thought VBR is better because more bits can be used for scenes that require them and less for those that don’t. Am I not correct on this assumption?

I was using CBR at RF 18. I was saving the files as m4v and using MetaX to embed metadata. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want my entire library to be MKV. When I rip my Blu-ray movies I do nothing to them. Just rip with all English subtitles and audio tracks and add to Plex. But because DVD’s are a 20+ year old technology, so many have letterbox and other annoying things. So Handbrake fixes all that for me. But I can’t get Plex to honor the “default” command for the forced foreign subtitle track. VLC does it just fine… So I’m stumped.

Do you use the filters in Handbrake?

4

VBR… always, with an average bit rate, always. DVD filters, always.

My exact settings are painfully detailed at that link complete with pictures at the bottom. Can’t miss.

I love creating Blu Ray rips at less than a quarter the size and bit rate and not be able to see one bit of difference. It makes my day. I’m busting the snot out of Free State of Jones right now down from the 30 gig original MakeMKV rip through Handbrake at 3500Kpbs and they’ll both look exactly the same to me. I can get a whole lot more 3.5 gig movies on disk than I can 30 giggers and if I can’t see the difference - what the hey?

A lot of people swear:
‘Hey man, I’ve simply got to have that original quality!’
Then the first thing that happens is Plex transcodes it down to about 5Mbps and I just laaaaaugh and laugh.

I also have a lot of trouble watching a 30Mbps stream on my phone at the doctor’s offfice through my 6Mbps upload speed. I dunno, I can never make it happen. It’s a dang mystery.

:slight_smile:

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@JuiceWSA said:
VBR… always, with an average bit rate, always. DVD filters, always.

My exact settings are painfully detailed at that link complete with pictures at the bottom. Can’t miss.

I love creating Blu Ray rips at less than a quarter the size and bit rate and not be able to see one bit of difference. It makes my day. I’m busting the snot out of Free State of Jones right now down from the 30 gig original MakeMKV rip through Handbrake at 3500Kpbs and they’ll both look exactly the same to me. I can get a whole lot more 3.5 gig movies on disk than I can 30 giggers and if I can’t see the difference - what the hey?

A lot of people swear:
‘Hey man, I’ve simply got to have that original quality!’
Then the first thing that happens is Plex transcodes it down to about 5Mbps and I just laaaaaugh and laugh.

I also have a lot of trouble watching a 30Mbps stream on my phone at the doctor’s offfice through my 6Mbps upload speed. I dunno, I can never make it happen. It’s a dang mystery.

:slight_smile:

I did read the link you provided. I just had some clarification questions.

When I said DVD filters what I meant was X264 tunes. Film, Animation, etc.

Also, I keep ALL my original MKV’s. So creating a second lower bitrate version of the same movie only uses more disk space in my case. So since Blu-ray is already H.264, and all my local playback devices can play the high bitrate, I use them in their original form. The only reason I don’t use the original MKV with DVD’s is because of what I said previously.

So that’s why I’m trying to match the “bitrate per pixel” quality of Blu-ray for my DVD re-codes.

Plus in the next few months I will be moving to a home that has FiOS! So 300/300Mbps will allow for upstreaming at pretty much whatever quality users want!

1 Like
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I only use the settings and features described in my guide.

For what it’s worth, a DVD has an original bit rate of 5000 to 6000Kbps, so if your recreations are more than that you’re wasting your time and disk space. No matter what you do you’ll never be able to make something better than the source. If you want to maintain the best quality you possibly can, use my settings and match the bit rate with the source’s bit rate and call it a day.

7

Cool. I know that it can’t be better than the original. Since MPEG2 is a 4:2:2 codec, and H.264 is 8:1:1, H.264 will never be as good as MPEG2. What I’m trying to figure out is what bitrate in H.264 is “equivalent” to the MPEG2 counterpart. It should be roughly 50% since there’s 50% less data.

Now if I can just figure out what to click, twist, type in Handbrake to make this happen I’ll be golden.

8

Why don’t you use the exact settings in my guide, match the average bit rate of the source, run a file through Handbrake and look at it. Use your eyeballs and put the calculator back in your pocket.

I think your eyeballs will tell you the product matches the source and in the end that’s all that matters. I’ve been doing this a long time and that guide is bulletproof.

Right now I have 6 DVD encodes in the Handbrake queue on this (powerful) machine and one Handbrake job running a 1080p MPEG2 recording to H264 on my lesser machine (40 minutes to splash down).

When it’s all over if you held a gun to my head and told me to pick which one was the source and which was the product you’d have to shoot me 'cause I couldn’t do it. I could do it easily if we played them through Plex on my devices because the MPEG2 streams would all be transcoding and Plex would DESTROY them. My encodes Direct Play. End of story.

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@JuiceWSA said:
Why don’t you use the exact settings in my guide, match the average bit rate of the source, run a file through Handbrake and look at it.

OK. So the reason I was having such a difficult time with your instructions is that Handbrake changed the tabs since you wrote up your tutorial.

To make the Advanced Tab appear you have to click two places. It appears they are trying to steer users away from the Advanced Tab and more to the X264 Tunes.

Have you seen these tunes? I’m not sure I’m a fan of them as the Film Tune appears to make the image “soft.”

Maybe you could just chime in about these new options. I’m using the"Slower" setting with profile 4.1 and that translates into 8 Reference Frames for a 480p DVD conversion. I’m also using 2-pass with the first pass being turbo @ ABR 4000kbps VBR. A typical movie on either of my machines takes between 1.5 to 2 hours which I’m perfectly fine with.

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@kd6icz said:
Maybe you could just chime in about these new options. I’m using the"Slower" setting with profile 4.1 and that translates into 8 Reference Frames for a 480p DVD conversion. I’m also using 2-pass with the first pass being turbo @ ABR 4000kbps VBR. A typical movie on either of my machines takes between 1.5 to 2 hours which I’m perfectly fine with.

_**EDIT!
I installed that hunk of junk on my other terminal and to my horror they have removed Custom Anamorphic Settings for all versions after 0.10.5.0 My guide is for creating material that will work well with Plex. It is written for a Handbrake version that is no longer acceptable for that task. With ALL versions after 0.10.5.0 it is impossible to create a file from DVD at 480p for use in Plex that properly reports it’s resolution. Version 0.10.5.0 can easily be downloaded here: https://handbrake.fr/old.php**_

Yes, I saw the new interface and all those useless ‘profiles’ in the right pane. I kept closing them until I reached ‘Legacy’ and quickly created a User Preset to match the images above and saved a new User Preset. It took all of about 90 seconds. As I explained in unbelievably painful detail above I do not use those kindergarden ‘speed’ settings. I blow right by them and attack the meat and potatoes in the Advanced tab. I do not have to run endless tests for a suitable constant quality setting and pray for success. I use Average Bitrate. I have trodden this steep, mountainous path before ye. I share (or try to) with you that which I have already found as the undeniable truth. Believe not the naysayers. They Lie as they try to sway you from the path of righteousness in the quest to become one with your visual material! (lol)

I loaded an HD job I have ‘On Deck’ into my trusty Profile I created only a moment before, checked what I normally check (cropping, audio, etc - also noted above), changed the bit rate to 2400kbps (because this piece of junk I’m working on barely even deserves that much), pressed Start and in about 90 minutes we’re going to find out how it did.

I fully expect the same, reliable direct playable material I always get with my settings above.

I can not comment on settings someone else thinks are ‘good for me’ (ever heard of Plex?), when I have already decided what is ‘good for me’ and the devices in my lineup. I can tell you that 8 reference frames is a load of fresh and exceptionally fragrant horse nuggets, because that will refuse to direct play on at least two of my devices at 1080p.

I really do suggest you try my settings. You might like them, but you will have to use your eyeballs to make what is surely a ‘judgement call’. A suite full of test equipment may confuse an issue that your eyeballs could sort out in moments.

The two versions of Handbrake are ‘almost’ identical. You always had to enable Advanced Tab in two places and I guess for some people having Advanced a little harder to find may in fact be a GOOD IDEA! I assure you if you will stick to my settings nothing in the Advanced tab will get you into trouble - guaranteed or your money back.

_EDIT:
Some of my above comments are now void. I removed Handbrake Version 1.0.1 and backed up. I suggest you do the same.
Version 0.10.5.0 Here: https://handbrake.fr/old.php_

I did create a fine version of ‘What About Bob (1991) [1080p].mp4’ @ 2400Kbps with the new version using the exact settings provided in my guide. If you’re creating nothing, but HD material it may be fine, but DVD creations @ 480p/576p will difficult, if not impossible and Plex will most certainly report bogus resolutions.

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I usually target a filesize around 10GB +/- for my Blu-ray rips, but then again I have good eyes and a 75" so quality matters and I can notice stuff others can’t. I’ll probably just add more space to my NAS first before I downgrade existing rips.

Real serious bummer about the Handbrake update, though. :frowning:

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@sremick said:
Real serious bummer about the Handbrake update, though. :frowning:

You Betcha!

That ruined my day to be honest. I liked a few of the tick boxes they added in a few places, but if you have to encode DVDs at 854x480 and then have Plex tell you they’re 576p - that pretty much is where I lose interest. The Planet is not yet ready to abandon the DVD standards that will be required until DVDs fade into the sunset and that ain’t happening soon no matter how much Handbrake.fr wishes it would.

They’re going to have to put Anamorphic settings back into their software if they want me to use a newer version. Period.

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@kd6icz said:
Cool. I know that it can’t be better than the original. Since MPEG2 is a 4:2:2 codec, and H.264 is 8:1:1, H.264 will never be as good as MPEG2. What I’m trying to figure out is what bitrate in H.264 is “equivalent” to the MPEG2 counterpart. It should be roughly 50% since there’s 50% less data.

Now if I can just figure out what to click, twist, type in Handbrake to make this happen I’ll be golden.

I think you have some of your figures there completely wrong…

MPEG 2 is 4:2:0 on DVD. 4:2:2 @ DVD data rates would look absolutely terrible. Usual data rates for MPEG2 4:2:2 are around 15Mb/s for the extra chroma resolution. So the sampling on Broadcast Television and DVD is 4:2:0 Component (YUV) to get the required low bitrates (2-10Mb/s)

H.264/MPEG4 is also 4:2:0 on Bluray. H.264 can be 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 but the data rate goes up correspondingly. Bluray bitrates average around 30Mb/s.

An SD uncompressed Video signal runs at 270Mb/s (25fps, 720 x 576) (some variations for different frame rates). DVD’s run a variable bitrate stream from around 2-8Mb/s. It does this by throwing a lot of picture information away, information that doesn’t come back when it gets uncompressed.

An HD uncompressed Video signal runs at around 1.5 Gb/s (25fps, 1920 x 1080) (will vary depending on format). Blurays use a variable stream that averages around 30Mb/s. The H.264 format needs to do a lot more than MPEG 2 to get this amount of compression, and thus is more efficient and capable of much better compression then MPEG2.

Whether its DVD or Bluray if you re-compress an already compressed data stream one of the methods used is to throw away picture information. Whether it is perceptible by the human eye is up to the watcher. For me I can see Compression artifacts on even the original 30Mb/s streams and hence don’t re-compress. Regardless of whatever bitrate you use, once you throw away picture information you can’t get it back.

MPEG2 does a good job, H.264 does a much better job.

14

@JuiceWSA said:

You Betcha!

That ruined my day to be honest. I liked a few of the tick boxes they added in a few places, but if you have to encode DVDs at 854x480 and then have Plex tell you they’re 576p - that pretty much is where I lose interest. The Planet is not yet ready to abandon the DVD standards that will be required until DVDs fade into the sunset and that ain’t happening soon no matter how much Handbrake.fr wishes it would.

They’re going to have to put Anamorphic settings back into their software if they want me to use a newer version. Period.

Please tell me there are bug reports and/or threads on their forums where people are already raging about this and giving them appropriate feedback. Silence is complacency.

15

@sremick said:
Please tell me there are bug reports and/or threads on their forums where people are already raging about this and giving them appropriate feedback. Silence is complacency.

Funny you should mention that:
latest version cannot change par size - HandBrake
Apparently public outcry (I left my ‘measured’ comment over at GitHub) has generated a proper response in at least one corner on the whirly ball of super-nova left-overs (even if it doesn’t work on all corners).

The functionality is temporailty removed as it was broken in 0.10.5. (It would only work for those who knew what they were doing) It’ll be back when I get time to refactor the code to make it behave better.

The good thing about using this:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1335697/#Comment_1335697
is that afterwards; ‘you’ll know what you’re doing’.

It has recently come to my attention that MAC and ‘Linus’ users can enjoy the upgrade and an enhanced GUI that I would myself gladly be using - and would gleefully upgrade my guide. Until then we’re kinda stuck with V 0.10.5.0

16

@JuiceWSA said:

It has recently come to my attention that MAC and ‘Linus’ users can enjoy the upgrade and an enhanced GUI that I would myself gladly be using - and would gleefully upgrade my guide. Until then we’re kinda stuck with V 0.10.5.0

Come over to Linux… we have cookies. :slight_smile:

Actually, if it weren’t for a few things like Dropbox, I’d probably still be on FreeBSD (yes, on the desktop). It’s my preferred OS. But at least it’s not Windows, which is the main goal.

17

@Stephen3001 said:

I think you have some of your figures there completely wrong…

MPEG 2 is 4:2:0 on DVD. 4:2:2 @ DVD data rates would look absolutely terrible. Usual data rates for MPEG2 4:2:2 are around 15Mb/s for the extra chroma resolution. So the sampling on Broadcast Television and DVD is 4:2:0 Component (YUV) to get the required low bitrates (2-10Mb/s)

H.264/MPEG4 is also 4:2:0 on Bluray. H.264 can be 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 but the data rate goes up correspondingly. Bluray bitrates average around 30Mb/s.

An SD uncompressed Video signal runs at 270Mb/s (25fps, 720 x 576) (some variations for different frame rates). DVD’s run a variable bitrate stream from around 2-8Mb/s. It does this by throwing a lot of picture information away, information that doesn’t come back when it gets uncompressed.

An HD uncompressed Video signal runs at around 1.5 Gb/s (25fps, 1920 x 1080) (will vary depending on format). Blurays use a variable stream that averages around 30Mb/s. The H.264 format needs to do a lot more than MPEG 2 to get this amount of compression, and thus is more efficient and capable of much better compression then MPEG2.

Whether its DVD or Bluray if you re-compress an already compressed data stream one of the methods used is to throw away picture information. Whether it is perceptible by the human eye is up to the watcher. For me I can see Compression artifacts on even the original 30Mb/s streams and hence don’t re-compress. Regardless of whatever bitrate you use, once you throw away picture information you can’t get it back.

MPEG2 does a good job, H.264 does a much better job.

OK… I was going way back to my 90’s broadcast engineering days when Betacam SX was all the rage.

So, based on your math, what would be the ideal settings in Handbrake to preserve as much of the data as possible without going overboard? I was trying to come up with a formula to mimic that of the average Blu-ray bitrate per pixel. But I finally just said the hell with it and settled on 4Mbps ABR VBR 2 pass 8 Reference Frames.

As far as the other settings that are “missing”, it seems to be spot on for my encodes so I’m not complaining. I’ve always used auto cropping and it hasn’t let me down so far.

18

You can have a reference at this article:
http://www.thewebernets.com/2015/02/28/easiest-best-optimal-settings-for-handbrake-dvd-video-conversion-on-mac-windows-and-linux/

19

I don’t know what HB version that is or for what OS, but good luck.

This guide, for Windows, written for HB Version 0.10.5.0 - is bulletproof:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1335697/#Comment_1335697

As soon as Handbrake comes to their senses and creates a way to maintain Custom anamorphic settings for DVD material with the HB version for Windows I’ll upgrade my HB version -and also the guide.

20

Forgive me for my ignorance, but I am trying to understand what is impacted by using the latest HB and setting Anamorphic to Loose. I see that, as you pointed out, Plex reports the video as 576p. But watching it on my TV I don’t notice any distortion of the picture as though it were being stretched or squeezed.