HandBrake 0.9.3

[Deusxmachina]

Mind if I ask what format you generally convert files to when trying to compress HD recordings? I have a bunch of stuff I'd rather not delete but it's starting to take up a lot of space so I'm trying to figure out the best thing to transcode them to without losing a lot of quality on the recordings.

h.264/x264, AAC audio. Substitute mp3 audio if you prefer. Not a whole lot of difference, but AAC is definitely better at low bitrates of like under 128. Or keep the 5.1 AC3 if it has it if you want. 5.1 often doesn't take up *too* much extra space, so it's often worth keeping.

A decent smoothing filter can do wonders if you're trying to save more space. Probably not worth bothering with unless it's an SD show with so-so quality like has a lot of grain or whatever, though.

[stangdaman]

h.264/x264, AAC audio. Substitute mp3 audio if you prefer. Not a whole lot of difference, but AAC is definitely better at low bitrates of like under 128. Or keep the 5.1 AC3 if it has it if you want. 5.1 often doesn't take up *too* much extra space, so it's often worth keeping.

Do you use handbrake for that or something else?

[Deusxmachina]

I mainly only used Handbrake for episodic DVDs since it was really good at separating the episodes. Well, it couldn't do single files before anyway. I'm starting to play with it a little more now that it can do individual, non-DVD files, but haven't really had much reason to use it or anything lately. Definitely a good program, though. Not the most options in the world, but most people don't need a whole lot more.

I think my current main problem with it is figuring out if it can retain AC3 5.1 audio or not. I haven't gotten around to it yet. Pro-logic II is damn good, but 5.1 is still better, and I wouldn't want to give that up on some shows.

And on that note, also, in my experience, if a show is in stereo 2.0, I gave up trying to encode it to pro-logic II. Something always seems to not come out right. But, a stereo receiver will convert it to PLII when it's played, so there's not a whole lot of point in messing with it during encoding anyway.

For individual files, I generally used AutoMKV. Has impressive deinterlacing options and things like that, but, for me, it sometimes locked up when setting up a batch file, or sometimes it wouldn't get past the "dg index" part of an individual file. Could just be something with my install, I don't know. I do like the program a lot other than when those problems creeped up. I probably wouldn't use much of anything else if it didn't lock up occasionally.

To do it automatically, you can use the batch script from the huuuggge thread around here for Mencoder. Only bad thing with automatically is, while the GBPVR commercial skip is good, I can't trust it for something I care enough about to archive and cut the commercials from, so I cut the commercials manually anyway. Could still set up the automatic batch file as a shortcut on your desktop to then drag-and-drop the cut file, though.

AVIdemux is good, too, and has a cutter. AVIdemux can do a lot of stuff, but it simply doesn't like some files sometimes. VideoRedo has a great cutter and is about the only thing I've found that can properly convert dvr-ms to .mpg. Not free, but it's good.

There are other programs out there, of course, but those are some of the main ones I used or used. Handbrake should be very nice, just limited on deinterlacing options and I don't know about the 5.1.

Oh yeah, and if using AC3, I use .mkv, since it's not a real standard for .mp4. .mp4 is a little better compatable for other (mainly portable) devices, so I use that when I can, but sticking AC3 into .mp4 is somewhat of a hack, so I avoid it. Probably doesn't matter a whole lot either way for anything in these two sentences since they are little things, but sometimes little things do matter.

[stangdaman]

Thanks for the info. I'm not really looking for anything to cut commercials with. I pretty much always use Video Redo for that. More just looking for something to reduce the size of HD recording by converting them to xvid or H264. I've never had much need to do that in the past but the old hard drive is finally starting to fill up so it's time to start finding out about that stuff or deleting things. But who really wants to do that? I thought about just getting soemthing like Divx Dr. a lot of people have told me H264 is better and, I don't think, that's the format Divx uses. Divx is an xvid format isn't it? Of course I don't really know much about the difference between the two either. I'll take a look at the ones you suggested. Thanks again.

[gEd]

To do it automatically, you can use the batch script from the huuuggge thread around here for Mencoder. Only bad thing with automatically is, while the GBPVR commercial skip is good, I can't trust it for something I care enough about to archive and cut the commercials from, so I cut the commercials manually anyway. Could still set up the automatic batch file as a shortcut on your desktop to then drag-and-drop the cut file, though.

There is always pastro's skiptool plugin to creating & adjusting the comskip cut points before it launches stattiks mencoder script to cut and convert the file. seems to work very well on the occasions that I have used it, albeit for xvid only, not H264.

[Deusxmachina]

I thought about just getting soemthing like Divx Dr. a lot of people have told me H264 is better and, I don't think, that's the format Divx uses. Divx is an xvid format isn't it? Of course I don't really know much about the difference between the two either. I'll take a look at the ones you suggested. Thanks again.

Xvid and divx are basically the same/similar but not quite. Xvid is basically an open-source and arguably better version of divx. I'd say most people would say xvid is superior to divx.

H.264/x264 has better compression than both of those. But it takes more processing power to encode, more processing power to play, and there are very few standalone players for it like there are for divx/xvid (avi). I don't care about standalone players other than for regular DVD players on occasion, so I almost always use .264. It should save at least 20% on filesize over an equivalent-quality divx or xvid.

I don't bother using anything other than .264 or (rarely) xvid for anything unless it's player-specific, such as mpeg2 for a DVD player or something like .wmv for a Microsoft Zune.