Making encodes playable accross various devices

[Gism]

I have a bunch of DVD's I want to encode into x264/mkv with MeGui but I want to make sure that files will be playable on standalone blu-ray/dvd players, consoles and on PC's. Which settings should I tweak in x264 to make this possible and in what range should those values be (especially for ref frames, b frames, pyramid, me range etc)?

[nurbs]

edit: When I wrote the following for some reason I thought you wanted to do this with MeGUI. If you want to use another GUI most of the things related to settings are still true, but you might not have the target device dropdown, but instead most of them come with device specific presets.

You don't really have to care about most of the settings. You select a preset, a tuning and a target playback device. If you want your encodes to play on consoles (XBox 360 and PS3) you can't use MKV, you'll have to use the MP4 container. I edited the post to add a few things.

My recommendation to you for maximum compatibility given that your sources are DVD is the following.
Choose the iPad as your target device, tick the "Show Advanced Settings" checkbox and enter 17500 for "VBV Maximum Bitrate" and "VBV Buffer Size" in the "Rate Control" tab. Then go back to the main tab pick a preset (speed/quality tradeoff), a tuning (film or animation depending on source) and a target quality (I'd say something in the 20 to 22 range for DVD; higher number gives lower quality).
For audio pick AAC and choose a stereo downmix in the settings.
Mux the result to a MP4 container.
edit: This is essentially a High Profile H.264 encode limited to level 3.1 with stereo AAC audio in a MP4 container.


This will play on all new Apple devices since the iPhone 4 (maybe 3GS), lots of Android phones, PS3, XBox 360, hardware accelerated on PC and most media players that support H.264.

If you want 5.1 AAC audio you'll lose the XBox and the Apple Devices IIRC.

If you want MKV you'll lose the Apple devices, the consoles, a lot of phones and some media players. On the other hand you gain better subtitle and audio codec support on the container.

If you have questions, please ask. It boils down to how important subtitles, audio codecs, 5.1 sound and compatibility are to you.