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I have two very large movie files, even after having been processed in Handbrake. The files in question are around 20Gb each, even though they are black and white movies, and have only one stereo soundtrack.
The usual size I have are between 1 and 6Gb and in .m4v and .mp4 formats, and are from SD and HD sources. I have nothing out of the ordinary in terms of length and most have one 5.1 sound track. Why are is there such variability in files sizes? Is this an issue I should ask on Handbrake forums?
When you use Constant Quality file sizes can vary wildly.
One reason could be the film has a lot of grain in it and Handbrake will attempt to capture each grain dot and reproduce it perfectly. <âin a file about 20gigsâŠlol
Here you go - start here and adjust as necessary:
3750Kbps will give you sizes at about 1.5G per hour.
That rate in a 2 Pass encode - using my settings above is MORE than enough for most anything - certainly for Black and White.
Personally, 2650Kbps is plenty for me, but youâll have to use the eyeballs in your head 'cause mine wonât work for youâŠ
What I would do is make some âpreviewsâ at various rates.
I use 240 second previews to give me a few scenes to look at and time to look at them.
Iâll drop those in an Other Videos library to look at them on various devices in the Plexiverse to make sure everything is looking good - and Direct Playing.
Iâm embroiled currently in busting 1080 TV Shows down to 480, using the lapsharp filter as described with a bit rate of 950Kbps (recent bump from 850Kbps - just 'cause) and I really canât tell the difference in those and 720s - but my storage devices can.
My motto is:
When youâve got a million of something - make 'em as small as you can.
Make the switch to Average Bit rate 2 Pass.
Youâll always know how big your files are going to be and you probably wonât see the difference - until you do 480s with the lapsharp that look better than their sources⊠try a few of those on for size and be amazed.
This happens with movies/shows with a poor film to digital transfer and also with black and white films.
The Handbrake Denoise filter can help clean this up. I generally set it to NLMeans / Medium / None.
It does âsoftenâ the picture. It is noticeable if you do a side-by-side comparison between having the filter enabled & not enabled. However, I find I donât notice it when watching the movie on my TV (and nobody else notices it because they havenât seen the comparison).
Enabling the filter kills throughput, so only use it as needed.
I run Handbrake on two different PCs, one has an i7-4790K (4c8t), and the other an AMD Ryzen 7-1800x (8c16t). For ânormalâ processing with Handbrake, the AMD is usually 2x - 4x faster than the Intel. With Denoise enabled, the throughput is the same.
Grain is a PITA, but hereâs what I do about it⊠nuthinâ, exceptâŠ
It made me go to 2 Pass. Well, that and those little white caps in the intro of Little White Lies. Grain tends to dance a bit and those little white caps just donât look right. Drove me batty for a while until 2 Pass cured it.
Not every grain-dot is faithfully represented, but they donât dance. Those little white caps look just like they do in the source files⊠woohoo.
As long as grain isnât misbehaving - I donât mind it. Itâs the film stock. Some have it, some donât.
