[salar]

I know there has been same topics but that one was for ipod touch also...!
so what is the best setting when ripping DVDs from handbreak? I tried the universal but when I play it with plex the video is small (its not widescreen) and also is there anyway to include subtitle with handbreak? I turned the subtitle on but it was always on I couldnt turn it off.

[Smithcraft]

Subtitles are something that confused me when I started converting my DVDs, many of which are foreign films. For some silly reason, I thought that subtitles were a text file that was timecoded to the movie. However, that is wrong. They are actually pictures that the DVD player superimposes on the movie.

So, when you told Handbrake to add the subtitles, you told it to render the subtitles into the image. I would imagine that no container provides for an overlay, or second video stream that can be imposed on the first one.

When you watch a file that has subtitles, they have been converted to a text file(via a special program using Optical Character Recognition with human guidance), and the player(Plex, VLC, QuickTime, whatever) overlays the text in a pleasing manner, at the time indicated in the subtitles file.

There is only one program that I know of that can rip a subtitles from a movie and it doesn't seem to work in a understandable manner. I believe there are a few for Windows.

SC

[salar]

Smithcraft, on Mar 16 2009, 05:41 AM, said:

Subtitles are something that confused me when I started converting my DVDs, many of which are foreign films. For some silly reason, I thought that subtitles were a text file that was timecoded to the movie. However, that is wrong. They are actually pictures that the DVD player superimposes on the movie.

So, when you told Handbrake to add the subtitles, you told it to render the subtitles into the image. I would imagine that no container provides for an overlay, or second video stream that can be imposed on the first one.

When you watch a file that has subtitles, they have been converted to a text file(via a special program using Optical Character Recognition with human guidance), and the player(Plex, VLC, QuickTime, whatever) overlays the text in a pleasing manner, at the time indicated in the subtitles file.

There is only one program that I know of that can rip a subtitles from a movie and it doesn't seem to work in a understandable manner. I believe there are a few for Windows.

SC

thank you so much for your explanation as far as subtitle. However what do most people use as a best setting for handbreak while converting DVDs?

[gbdesai]

salar, on Mar 16 2009, 12:50 AM, said:

thank you so much for your explanation as far as subtitle. However what do most people use as a best setting for handbreak while converting DVDs?

Just converting a bunch of regular DVD rips now, so I use the following settings with good results (maybe overkill by some people's estimates):

BTW, I just rip the main movie.

Output Settings
Format: MKV
Picture Settings: Automatic
Anamorphic: Loose (to optimize performance)
Filters: Decomb (everything else is off or disabled including deinterlace, denoise, etc.)

Video
Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
Framerate (FPS): Same as Source
Advanced Encoding: (everything off here)
Constant Quality: 59% (some say this can be lower, but I like it here)

Audio/Subs
I always pick the main english track and set the Audio Codec to AC3 (I'm guessing others may select to reencode the audio to MP3 or AAC, but I prefer direct AC3)

Subtitles I always leave off, I just get them from OpenSubtitles.org when I need 'em easier that way...

I leave the other settings alone... Hope that's what you were looking for.

G

P.S. I think when you use subtitles in Handbrake they get hard coded to the video (so you can't turn em off they are burned right into the main video stream)

[Smithcraft]

What is the best for me, may not be acceptable to you. At the HB forums there is a twelve page thread in the General section about settings.

I use two pass(turbo first pass) and an average rate of 1500. I think the basic setting I use is Universal, but I'm not sure. I look at the preview image and see what happens with Strict and Loose, as sometimes the aspect ratio doesn't scale correctly when selecting Loose. Somethings, like Making of ... parts I check to see if the cropping is correct. Some of the Babylon 5 special features would have been ruined if I didn't check that, as they would have cropped the picture, but it was a 4:3 special. I also use default for decomb. Never use deinterlace!

For the audio, I always use AC3 passthough. My receiver doesn't do AAC.

SC

[Aargh-a-Knot]

I am always a little surprised at people's settings. They seem a bit low to me. I use ABR anywhere from 2100-2500, depending on the content. I tried lower settings but the picture quality is just horrible. Maybe because I'm watching on an 80" wide projector screen? It sure would make everything easier (ie quicker) if I could use those lower settings.

[gbdesai]

Aargh-a-Knot, on Mar 16 2009, 08:02 AM, said:

I am always a little surprised at people's settings. They seem a bit low to me. I use ABR anywhere from 2100-2500, depending on the content. I tried lower settings but the picture quality is just horrible. Maybe because I'm watching on an 80" wide projector screen? It sure would make everything easier (ie quicker) if I could use those lower settings.

That's why I use Constant Quality, sometimes grainy films end up taking a lot of space and I tweak, but usually it gives great results on most DVDs. The bitrates soar when needed to keep the quality high.

[aaronjb]

Aargh-a-Knot, on Mar 16 2009, 01:02 PM, said:

Maybe because I'm watching on an 80" wide projector screen?

I'm guessing that makes a big difference - I'm presume that's an HD projector, too?

I can get away with very low bitrates on my TV, because it's a SD RP set (and RP sets are notoriously 'fuzzy' and lacking in any kind of definition - rather like my body), but what looks fine for me would undoubtedly look like it was drawn by a four year old with a set of five crayons

I tend to encode on higher bitrates so that if (when) I upgrade the TV the content will hopefully still look decent..

Out of interest, how big does the average movie end up for you, Aargh? With CQ of 65% I end up with something close to 3.5Gb, 60% more like 2.5Gb, and if I'm targetting 'size' I go for ~1.2Gb. I realise it will vary hugely based on the movie, but just a ballpark figure would be interesting.

[Aargh-a-Knot]

aaronjb, on Mar 16 2009, 09:00 AM, said:

I'm guessing that makes a big difference - I'm presume that's an HD projector, too?

Out of interest, how big does the average movie end up for you, Aargh? With CQ of 65% I end up with something close to 3.5Gb, 60% more like 2.5Gb, and if I'm targetting 'size' I go for ~1.2Gb. I realise it will vary hugely based on the movie, but just a ballpark figure would be interesting.

Yeah, I recently upgraded to a 720p projector, and noticed that my encodes actually look worse rather than better.

Most movies I encode wind up being right around 2Gb, sometimes up to 3Gb if its a long movie and I set the ABR up.

I tried constant quality a bit, but it seemed that by the time I got the quality up to something decent, it was much much bigger. Maybe I need to revisit that again and do some testing.

[salar]

I am sorry if I sound stupid but can you plz specifically say what are all the settings for you Aargh? since you have such huge screen b/c I am probably going to get a bigger TV.

[aaronjb]

Aargh-a-Knot, on Mar 16 2009, 03:31 PM, said:

I tried constant quality a bit, but it seemed that by the time I got the quality up to something decent, it was much much bigger. Maybe I need to revisit that again and do some testing.

Hmm interesting - so you found the quality better using a set bitrate rather than CQ? I did some encodes yesterday - granted on three different movies, so it's a little difficult to tell - and a CQ of 0.65 yielded a movie that's 3.16Gb, and 0.60 gave me a 2.25Gb movie (Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions respectively). Both look great on the laptop, almost indistinguishable from the source DVD, and both look great on the TV - but my TV isn't exactly the best test

[Aargh-a-Knot]

salar, on Mar 17 2009, 12:02 AM, said:

I am sorry if I sound stupid but can you plz specifically say what are all the settings for you Aargh? since you have such huge screen b/c I am probably going to get a bigger TV.

I start with AppleTV preset.

Then I make the following changes:

Format: MP4 File
Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
Average bitrate (kbps): anywhere from 1900 (animation) to 2500 (think Lord of the Rings)

2-pass encoding, with turbo first pass: checked

Picture settings:

Anamorphic: Loose, width 720 (sometimes I have to change this, depending on the source. Just pick whatever looks good)

Detelecine: Checked

Audio: I will usually select one AAC (faac), and one AC3 passthru because I plan on upgrading to a nice sound system some day.

That's basically it. I think I need to do some more testing though, and maybe these setting could be refined some more. Like I said, I did only a couple encodes with constant quality, and they were either really big, or looked like crap. Maybe if I was viewing them on a laptop, but not on a giant projection screen.

My next tests are going to be to compare the encode time for a movie using the GUI vs the CLI. Ive heard that the CLI is much faster.

[salar]

Aargh-a-Knot, on Mar 17 2009, 12:59 PM, said:

I start with AppleTV preset.

Then I make the following changes:

Format: MP4 File
Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
Average bitrate (kbps): anywhere from 1900 (animation) to 2500 (think Lord of the Rings)

2-pass encoding, with turbo first pass: checked

Picture settings:

Anamorphic: Loose, width 720 (sometimes I have to change this, depending on the source. Just pick whatever looks good)

Detelecine: Checked

Audio: I will usually select one AAC (faac), and one AC3 passthru because I plan on upgrading to a nice sound system some day.

That's basically it. I think I need to do some more testing though, and maybe these setting could be refined some more. Like I said, I did only a couple encodes with constant quality, and they were either really big, or looked like crap. Maybe if I was viewing them on a laptop, but not on a giant projection screen.

My next tests are going to be to compare the encode time for a movie using the GUI vs the CLI. Ive heard that the CLI is much faster.

Thank you so much for the respond