x264 Settings for Blu-ray backup purposes

[Aznboy1993]

Hey guys. I am quite new to this so please bear with me!

I am in the process of "archiving" my blu-ray collection to H.264 AVC encoded streams in an .mkv container. I am aiming for maximum efficiency (so to speak). I don't want a full "lossless" backup (as the word archive would suggest) since I am also making bit by bit images of each disc. I am using HandBrake 0.9.9 (for Windows x64) as my GUI. Here are the settings I have come up with thus far (after a few trial runs):


CRF 16
Very slow preset
Level 4.1, high profile
Anamorphic strict and automatic cropping
FPS same as source, variable framerate
Audio passthrough (mostly DTS-HD MA)


However, I still have a few questions. Namely:


What tune should I use? (I mainly have old Disney animations, newer 3D CGI animations like Frozen, and action movies.)
What about detelecine, decomb, denoise, and deblock?
I noticed that x264 has been updated a few times since HandBrake's last official release (0.9.9). Should I be concerned and manually replace the binaries to the latest version?
Anything else look out of place for what I am trying to achieve?


Any insight would be greatly appreciated! :)

[M+AUDIO]

Hello, Aznboy1993



What tune should I use? (I mainly have old Disney animations, newer 3D CGI animations like Frozen, and action movies.)


Maybe wrong but for me, --tune animation sounds bad in 3D animated materials. --tune film sounds better.
Use your eyes. handbrake GUI have a splitting option on top. select your favorite (short) part of a movie (change "chapters" to "seconds" and set "#" thourgh "#".) and do some test encodes. more on --tune animation, --tune film and --tune grain.



What about detelecine, decomb, denoise, and deblock?


Detelecine is a filter that depends on the source. if your source is telecined, enable it else set it to off. read handbrake's guide about telecine here (https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Telecine).
decomb and deinterlace works the same except decomb is smarter. set decomb to fast or default and it wont hurt anything even when your source was progressive. (according to handbrake's guide here (https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Decomb)). but if you sure your source is not interlaced or hybrid, then you don't need both of them and you can save some CPU cycles.
since you use such a low CRF and you want a bit by bit image, set denoise to off. denoising usually helps on low bitrate encodes.
and set deblock to off too. it is there for bad quality sources.



I noticed that x264 has been updated a few times since HandBrake's last official release (0.9.9). Should I be concerned and manually replace the binaries to the latest version?


No need. just grab a latest nightly build from here (http://handbrake.fr/nightly.php). this is usually better to use nighltly builds unless you saw a specific problem. (so then report that problem to developers;) )

hope it helps.

[benwaggoner]

Hello, Aznboy1993
Maybe wrong but for me, --tune animation sounds bad in 3D animated materials. --tune film sounds better.
--tune film is best for 3D animation (ala Frozen, Pixar). --tune animation is for cel animation (ala Anime, classic hand-drawn Disney)

Detelecine is a filter that depends on the source. if your source is telecined, enable it else set it to off. read handbrake's guide about telecine here (https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Telecine).
decomb and deinterlace works the same except decomb is smarter. set decomb to fast or default and it wont hurt anything even when your source was progressive.
And most Blu-rays use native 24p for 24p content. So deinterlacing would be required for 1080i, but generally not otherwise.

and set deblock to off too. it is there for bad quality sources.
Nooooooo! The in-loop deblocking filter of H.264 does a fine job of retaining detail, as it has less effect as the content is less compressed.

[M+AUDIO]

Nooooooo! The in-loop deblocking filter of H.264 does a fine job of retaining detail, as it has less effect as the content is less compressed.
Hello mr. waggoner
and
Nooooooo :)
by deblock, i was referring to a pre-processing filter called "deblock" in the filters tab of handbrake. not in-loop filter of x264 which is available in advanced tab;)

[Aznboy1993]

Thanks for the info guys. It is much appreciated :)

I will try using -film tune for my action movies and 3D CGI animations (Frozen, Tangled, etc.) and -animation for my traditional Disney animations. Quick questions though...is it beneficial to use a tune? What about no tune at all?

[M+AUDIO]

Quick questions though...is it beneficial to use a tune? What about no tune at all?
Note that --tune is set to none (=>not set) by default (not only in handbrake). which means using it, is up to you. most of the time it is beneficial to pick a tune. but if you see no much difference in some situation then.
(some tunings have only special use cases. for example, when some advanced user goes to calculate some objective metrics like PSNR or SSIM, he/she "should" use --tune ssim or --tune psnr).

[benwaggoner]

Hello mr. waggoner
and
Nooooooo :)
by deblock, i was referring to a pre-processing filter called "deblock" in the filters tab of handbrake. not in-loop filter of x264 which is available in advanced tab;)
Oh, sorry. I'm not familiar with handbreak and didn't know it had its own deblocking. That's definitely a good feature to have for DVD ripping, but as you say, is probably counter productive at best for a decent Blu-Ray.