Start with the Basic HD profile - you can delete everything else - all crap. Then do this, exactly, make a 240 second ‘Preview’ and see what you think. File Sizes will be consistent at about 1.4G per hour. My eyeballs stop seeing improvement above about 3250kbps, so I give it 3750 and call it a day. Your eyeballs may require something different. Make a 4 minute preview and decide for yourself.
Of course, you should create an audio track that will Direct Play. For me any flavor of AC3 works fine. I typically pass through all the audio, then on a final pass with Xmedia Recode I tweek the audio (format/leveling) and add any subtitles - AFTER HANDBRAKE! HB creates ASS subs in everything it does - except a ‘Burn In’, and ASS subs transcode on everything I have. Just say ‘NO’ to HB and subtitles.
Apart from that the new HB is basicallly ‘idiot-proof’ and I oughta know…
I have two (2) user profiles - 1080 and 480. I need nothing else. I make 720s sometimes, but just make that change on the fly. Most everything is simply drag, drop and go.
Some tools:
#1 SuperFriend: http://makemkv.com/ <—rip first, HB later.
MKVToolNix Downloads – Matroska tools for Linux/Unix and Windows <—various fix-ups, alteration muxes, joining/splitting, tagging, etc.
XMedia Recode Download - Free Video-Converter <–#1 Audio, Sub Mux, ect.
Nikse.dk <— rather self-explanatory - and necessary (if you can hear the [Door Slams] and don’t need to read it, etc).
What follows is the ‘480’ profile settings:
“Greyed Out” means HB is doing automatic things -and just reporting what it’s doing - don’t try to change things you can’t change.
HB will almost always get the ‘Auto-Cropping’ right, but… it does drop the ball and should always be checked.
Enjoy
