dvd to H.264 for a beginner--wants both quality and size...

[gamergomer]

My kids have a ton of pokemon dvds that I've ripped and put on our Patriot Media Box. Unfortunately, the 320gb hard drive I installed is full. I'm converting the episodes to H.264, but I'm running into issues.

I'm trying to find the best encoder first, and it seems like everyone has an opinion. I landed on handbrake. Is there anything better even if it costs money? Getting the most compatible, smallest, best looking files is my goal (duh).

Secondly, are there any tricks besides playing with the RF slider to getting quality and size? At the normal preset (RF 20) I'm getting a 350MB file for a 22 minute episode. I don't want to shrink below full dvd resolution. I will play around with the RF slider. But is there any tricks? Can I make the encoding take longer to get better picture for the size or anything?

Lastly and what has really kept me from doing much incoding, is that I'm getting artifacts when I play my encoded files in Windows Media Player (windows 7). I don't get these artifacts in VLC. I haven't yet tested on my patriot box yet. I guess I'm afraid that they'll work fine on my patriot box, but then I'll get a different media box later and they'll have artifacts... Does the WMP H.164 decoder just suck?

Examples of artifacts:

http://i42.tinypic.com/a2sy36.png

[Ghitulescu]

These are not artifacts, these are errors ....

[AMED]

Try using MPC-HC (http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/) and report back.

[nm]

I'm trying to find the best encoder first, and it seems like everyone has an opinion. I landed on handbrake. Is there anything better even if it costs money? Getting the most compatible, smallest, best looking files is my goal (duh).
Best encoder for your purpose is x264 and pretty much all free H.264 encoder GUIs use it, including HandBrake. However, the old HandBrake 0.9.5 release doesn't expose x264's built-in preset and tuning options, which makes this kind of tweaking painful. HandBrake's best encoding preset ("High Profile") only compares to x264 medium speed preset. Slower settings give better quality/filesize ratio.

The solution is to get a recent nightly build of HandBrake or switch to one of the other x264 GUIs: Hybrid, MeGUI, Ripbot264 or Staxrip, for example. Most of them have device profiles that might help with your standalone player.

Have you noticed the MPEG-4 encoder GUI forum: http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=78

[gamergomer]

no errors with MPC-HC or VLC.

With windows 7 64 bit Windows Media Player 12, I get these errors about every 10 seconds in the video. Mostly the errors are there for just a second, but sometimes they stay till the scene changes. Windows Media Center has the same issue, but I would assume it's the same decoder.

I've encoded only this first episode so far, but I've encoded it a number of different ways and they all have errors like this (some have it worse and better quality doesn't mean less errors).

I hadn't noticed that forum, I'll check it out. Thanks nm, that advice is the best I've heard and I've been reading around for a few days!!!

I'm using handbrake 9.5 which seems to be the latest.

[Wishbringer]

First you have to find out, what your patriot media box supports at h.264 functions.
Some support only Level 3.0, some Level 4.1, other 5.1
Next, there are some functions that are not very well implemented in some standalones: b-pyramid is such a function.

This can ony be evaluated by encoding files over and over again, and enabling, disabling and lowering settings between encodes till errors doesn't occur any more.
Then you can tune encoder for kind of movie: grainy, toon, high motion etc.
After that the final step is to find out the best crf/cq for your movies. crf 18 standard, lower is better, higher reduces filesize and quality.

[nm]

+1 to Wishbringer's advice. H.264 Level 3.0 should give good compatibility for SD video, but there may be some parameters the decoder dislikes.

That Windows 7 WMP problem is a weird one though. I wonder if the MFT codec is offloading decoding to your GPU through DXVA?


I'm using handbrake 9.5 which seems to be the latest.

Check this HandBrake forum post for a link to nightly builds: https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15901

[sneaker_ger]

There's also a tutorial for HandBrake (0.9.5) on how to translate x264's presets into HandBrake options:
https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19426

[gamergomer]

That Windows 7 WMP problem is a weird one though. I wonder if the MFT codec is offloading decoding to your GPU through DXVA?


I have a gts 8800 video card. Is there any way to check the GPU offloading or turn it off? I don't see anything in media player settings?

[gamergomer]

I tried turning on GPU accelleration in VLC and got no errrors in the video playback.