Brad Haynes' Blog » Technology http://tcn.co.uk/blog User Experience and Software Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:18:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 My ultimate Handbrake settings http://tcn.co.uk/blog/2007/06/my-ultimate-handbrake-settings/ http://tcn.co.uk/blog/2007/06/my-ultimate-handbrake-settings/#comments Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:52:34 +0000 brad http://tcn.co.uk/blog/2007/06/my-ultimate-handbrake-settings/ After many months (on and off) of testing, reading, deliberating, scratching my head and waiting I’m finally happy that I’ve found the perfect settings for encoding video with Handbrake for playback on my Mac and AppleTV.

For general DVD quality movies:

  • File format/Codecs: MP4 AVC
  • Encoder: x264 (h.264 Main profile, options: me=umh;no-fast-pskip=1)
  • Quality: 62% Constant quality
  • Picture settings: Anamorphic (if available)
  • Audio: Stereo, 44.1 KHz, 128 kbps

This should result in an approximate rip speed of 18 frames per second on first generation Macbook Pro.

For TV (4:3) formatted animation:

  • File format/Codecs: MP4 AVC
  • Encoder: x264 (h.264 iPod)
  • Quality: 50% constant quality
  • Picture settings: 640 x 480
  • Audio: Stereo, 44.1 KHz, 128 kbps

This will also playback on a 5G video iPod as well as being a fairly optimal compromise between quality and file-size.

]]> http://tcn.co.uk/blog/2007/06/my-ultimate-handbrake-settings/feed/ 0 Old Bob and Piracy http://tcn.co.uk/blog/2005/09/old-bob-and-piracy/ http://tcn.co.uk/blog/2005/09/old-bob-and-piracy/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2005 17:19:00 +0000 brad http://tcn.co.uk/blog/?p=7 This week I have mostly been drinking Old Bob. Don’t mistake this for some sort of dodgy pass-time, it’s simply a bloody fantastic real ale. Brewed by Ridley’s of Essex, I’ve yet to find a better pint in a London pub. Sadly Ridley’s has just been sold to Greene King, so the beer is bound to take a drop in quality if they decide to brew it in the sugar-beet hell that is Bury St. Edmunds. I’m thinking of joining CAMRA and growing a beard so I can blend with real ale aficionados – I already have a battered corduroy suit jacket, so the look will almost be complete.

I saw ‘40 year old virgin‘ at the cinema which I’m going to have to recommend. It could have been really fucking awful, but it’s not. I cared about the characters and it even had me laughing, which is rare lately.

I finally got around to working out how to copy DVDs onto my mac – not as simple as it sounds as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried. I won’t go into great detail as I’m sure it’s not legit, but I want to keep the movie’s I’ve bought on my computer. I’m not really sure why copying ripping CDs onto my iPod is okay, but copying a movie from a DVD isn’t? Anyway, Mac The Ripper works a treat for extracting the DVD content, removing the region code and macrovision protection. FFmpegX (after a fidly installation) will encode your VOB files into just about anything you want, and for any device. I’ve been going for the H.264 format as at 1/10th compression with very little loss in quality it’s a minor miracle. Sadly, I need a bit more oomph in processing power than my powerBook can muster as currently the average DVD encoding process is taking about 8 hours.

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