Handbrake Settings.

Caporegime
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8 Nov 2008
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Will a mod please move this to its rightful sub-forum, Windows & Other Software. Thanks. :)

If any experienced users are able to improve on my current settings, then I would be grateful. I don't know much about this, as I have only recently started getting my feet wet. What would you improve / change?

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I personaly would use the "Avg bitrate" setting instead of "constant quality", it gives you much more choice on quality/size, for a decent quality movie I wouldn't put it any lower than 2500 for high quality any thing between 4000 and 6000 is good, and always use 2 pass encoding.
Next I would change the x264 preset to slow or slower.
And that's about it for me.
 
I personaly would use the "Avg bitrate" setting instead of "constant quality", it gives you much more choice on quality/size, for a decent quality movie I wouldn't put it any lower than 2500 for high quality any thing between 4000 and 6000 is good, and always use 2 pass encoding.
Next I would change the x264 preset to slow or slower.
And that's about it for me.

Thanks for 'stopping' by. Trying this out now. :)
 
A few points :

I've tried using the following to reduce / remove 'pixelation' on videos.

* using constant quality
* using avg bitrate / 2 pass encoding
* encoding at slow / slower speeds
* select advanced tab - then increasing the number of reference frames

None of this seems to have helped much, if at all.


What determines the maximum bitrate that you can select in avg bitrate? I'm assuming the obvious here, but I don't know for sure.
 
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What determines the maximum bitrate that you can select in avg bitrate?
There is no maximum, you can take it as high as you want. Bluray is encoded at around 8000 iirc.
If you are having pixelation problems with a rate that high, I can only imagine the source file is garbage.
What are you trying to encode? as in, where is the source from.
 
There is no maximum, you can take it as high as you want. Bluray is encoded at around 8000 iirc.
If you are having pixelation problems with a rate that high, I can only imagine the source file is garbage.
What are you trying to encode? as in, where is the source from.

I'm trying to encode a game play video after having recorded with afterburner (container format is AVI). After encoding with handbrake, the mp4 file created is what I upload to youtube.
 
That's a likely problem right there.. you will be re-encoding the sequence 3 times each with a lossy codec. A photo copy of a photocopy of a photocopy..... It will degrade at each encode.

Creating high quality video to youtube is a challenge to most, your internet upload connection is likely to be the limiting factor.

Even youtube recommend 50Mbps for a high quality 1080p video. Or 8000kbps for 1080p standard quality.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en-GB


The problem is that youtube re-encode whatever you send them unfortunately. So unless you record then upload a lossless file your videos most likely will look bad. The Problem with doing that however, is that even with some lossless codec's that enable the file sizes to be a lot smaller than raw, you'l likely be constrained to uploading a 100gb file for a max of 20mins of video if your lucky.

If your not prepared to go that far:
Either upload the avi from afterburner(do it overnight, as your avi may take a long time, plus you shouldn't fall foul to isp limits during this period).

Or not use afterburner, try using either nvidia shadowplay or the ati raptr to capture the gameplay. which create a *264 mp4 using the on board encoders which you can upload. - Youtube will again decimate the quality, however you will only be re-encoding 2 times instead of 3, 1 at recording and 1 from youtube. You can choose bitrates etc from the settings However file sizes should be pretty small in comparison to the avi(afterburner) method.

There are lots of additional things you can do to trick youtube into giving you a better image, such as a very mild film grain or even upscalaing your video to 4k. That said I'd worry about those for a different day.


TLDR... Don't use youtube if you want high quality video, host your 1 time encoded file.
 
Thanks, Blackbadger. :)

My internet speed is now 76/19, well, potentially anyway.

I'll consider uploading overnight (unlimited internet).

I do intend to move from afterburner soon to something like Dxtory, Mirillis or OBS, though the latter looks the more complicated to set up. Unfortunately, I can't use ShadowPlay, as I don't have an nVidia card though I will be getting one in the not too terribly distant future. I would try using Raptr, though for some reason I can't login, but anyway that's a problem for me to solve.



Interestingly, I stumbled across this yesterday. I'll post a link, along with a few of my settings - (which weren't the original ones I was using) :

http://l2citadel.com/forums/topic/1...msi-afterburner-and-x264-encoding-on-the-fly/

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As it turned out, it didn't seem to make enough, if any difference, though no doubt there are other settings that I haven't tried yet.




I've just tried to upload a video to youtube, but it wouldn't allow me to do so. I accidentally didn't select the right afterburner options correctly, so consquently the file size was quite big (173gb). I meant to use MJGP compression, but instead I made an error and chose uncompressed. :D
 
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I use an older version of Handbrake which gave you a filesize option. I would use Normal Profile, 2 -pass encoding and selecting fileseize. For an 1 hour 30 min video I set the filesize as 2GB which gave me a great quality video (1080p video)


EDIT: What GPU are you using? What resolution are you gaming at?
 
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I use an older version of Handbrake which gave you a filesize option. I would use Normal Profile, 2 -pass encoding and selecting fileseize. For an 1 hour 30 min video I set the filesize as 2GB which gave me a great quality video (1080p video)


EDIT: What GPU are you using? What resolution are you gaming at?

Actually, I haven't used handbrake for a little while. I just thought I'd use my old thread rather than create a new one. Out of interest, what version are you using?

My graphics card is a 7970, and the resolution I use is 1200p.


The other issue I'm having is that when recording Doom 3 + Absolute HD mod installed, no audio is being picked up. All other games are fine.

As to my original question, I've read that MKV is better than AVI, though I wanted to check that out with some of the more experienced people on here. The thing is, if MKV is worth 'going for', then I would need to find a way for Windows Movie Maker to be able to read it.
 
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I'm currently using Windows Movie Maker, which unfortunately doesn't play ball with MKV, it seems.

I'm quite happy with AVI, though if I can improve quality then all well and good.
 
Anyone got an idea what might be causing this?


The first video was recorded with Fraps (free version). The audio plays fine.




The second was recorded with Afterburner, but for the life of me I can't get any audio.

 
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