Easiest Best Optimal settings for Handbrake DVD Video Conversion on Mac, Windows and Linux This is a simple easy guide on how to make the best encodes with the smallest file size in Handbrake without having to know or understand all of the settings. Just copy my settings and you’re done!.NOTE. – These settings are for DVD Video ONLY – You can find a Blu Ray Tutorial. Video encoding is a topic a lot of people are very passionate about. Factors like TV size, Viewing distance, hardware, drive space restrictions and a plethora of other concerns are all valid. But if you are like me, and just want to reduce your episodes to a more manageable size, whilst retaining most of the quality, here’s how to do it.
PLEASE NOTE – This method will produce very nice quality videos, that will look good on 1080p TV’s, but may take 2 hours or more to process each hour of video, so my advice is to let it run whilst you are sleeping each night. Once you have ripped your Disks to MKV files with Make MKV, Open Handbrake (You can download the latest version for free ) then press the source button and select the file you want to convert, or if you want to do a batch of files, select the folder that contains all of your ripped MKV’s. Handbrake will import them all, but you will only see the first one. Now it’s time to make some adjustments to the settings. All of your settings should look like the above screen grab – Click it to enlarge. Set the output format to MKV File 2.
With the abovementioned Handbrake 1.0.0 errors in mind, you will clearly want an alternative to solve all the issues. Here MacX DVD Ripper Pro (both Mac and Windows versions) is available for you, not only it provides the Apple iPhone XS presets Handbrake does not have but also it boasts other 390+ preset profiles including iPhone XS/XS Max/XR/X/8/7/6s/6 Plus/5S/5C, iPad Air, Samsung Galaxy.
Click the button that says “Video”. Make sure the video codec is H.264 (x264) 3. The frame rate should be “Same as Source” and Constant Framerate should be selected. Check Constant Quality and adjust the slider until the RF number goes to 20 5.
For the encoder options, slide the preset slider to Very Slow. Trust me, it takes a while, but the quality is far superior, and usually yields a smaller file size. Unfortunately it is a trade off for speed vs quality. Like I said, run it while you are sleeping. Leave “Fast Decode” unchecked. Set Tune to Film 8. Set Profile to High 9.
Set Level to 3.1 10. Now click the “Picture Settings” button in the top right side of the window. A new window will open. Change all of your settings look like this 11.
Whilst in the picture settings window, click “Filters” and change all of your settings to look like these as well. Denoise and Deblock will make the picture look SO much better when viewed on larger 1080p TVs.If you are in the USA you can skip this step, but for the rest of us, we need to know if our video is progressive or interlaced (the method used to draw each frame of video). If your video is progressive, you can skip this step, but if it is interlace, you will definitely want to de-interlace the video before you watch it on a 1080 screen, otherwise you will see all kinds of ugly horizontal lines in fast moving scenes like the image below. (If you dont know whether your video is interlaced or progressive, Mac users can use to find out, and Windows users can use to find out) If your video is interlaced, make sure “Deinterlace” is checked and select “Slower” for best results.
Now you can close out the Picture Settings window and select the “Audio” tab in the main window. I am a real Audiofile, I love the Dolby Digital and DTS 5-7 channel audio tracks in movies, so I select “Auto PassThru”.
But, if regular 2 channel Stereo is ok for you, you can configure that in this area if you want. I figure you are converting a DVD, so you might as well have the best sound quality available. Just select the Dolby Digital or DTS sound track from the drop down window, and choose “Auto Passthru” 13.
Click the “Subtitles” tab and select none 14. Click the “Chapters” tab and make sure “Create Chapter Markers” is un-checked. You are now ready to start encoding.
If you are only doing one file, just press the “Start” button and Handbrake will start encoding. If you are doing a batch of files, open the File Menu and select “Add All Titles To Queue” 16.
Press the “Show Queue” button to see all your files waiting to be encoded 17. Press the “Start” button and your encoding session will begin. Hi Jeff, Thanks for commenting. As I wrote after the green words that say PLEASE NOTE, “This method will produce very nice quality videos, that will look good on 1080p TV’s, but may take 2 hours or more to process each hour of video” 2 hours OR MORE for each hour of video!
That is why I suggested to run it at night while you are asleep. Time Vs Quality is a sliding “trade-off” scale in video encoding. Faster encodes equal degraded quality, slower encodes gives your computer time to produce a better result. Hi Greg, First of all – thank you! This is an awesome guide. I’m really new to all of this and I’m an actor trying to rip DVDs of student films and theater work so I can put together a demo reel. I was wondering what settings you would recommend using if I want to retain quality but for playback on computers/mobile devices.
I will be uploading things to either YouTube or Vimeo, and I noticed YouTube does not support mkv, so, I converted in VLC to MP4 and from what I can tell it’s ok, but I wonder if there is another way to do all of this. Thanks again! Just trans-coded my Star Wars DVD set using H.264 encoding in a MKV wrapper according to this article.
Very pleased, looks great for SD, with a small file size of 1-1.3 each. Very good guide. Now on to my Blu Ray collection and your other article. Did one already, Tomorrowland, took one of my older PCs over a day but approx 30GB file ripped from a DVDFab9 file to a 10.2GB file. Looks great and can now watch from a modest network file server now. Looks like my Ubuntu PC with a Core i3 will do it much faster. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for the fantastic walkthrough. Would like to add a comment noting that video encoding is highly CPU dependent — if you are still running an old processor these settings are likely to be unbearably slow if you do a lot of ripping and encoding.
As a point of comparison, I’m running a new system with a i7 6700k at 4.5 gHz and each minute of encode using these exact setitngs takes about 30 seconds. There is obviously some variability depending on what you are encoding but this is one instance where processing power makes a significant difference. Hi Nick, yes, the quality will be better, and file size will be smaller than if you use the default hi def profile.
Hi Ted, Great idea to make a preset once done! Thanks for contributing that tip! Hi Mike, Regarding size, I think I need to modify the post as it is a bit misleading. I generally leave the width and height alone, and exactly as they come up as once I load the source video file, and I also leave “keep aspect ratio” checked. Leaving those numbers alone in combination with keeping cropping values at zero, and the anamorphic value “strict” should give you the same frame size and ratio as the source file. The reason for cropping is to reduce file size by not having to encode those areas.
Any player will automatically put dark areas based on the screen size/aspect ratio being displayed on. The cropped video file has the picture size and video aspect ratio embedded in it so the players fill out the rest of the space on the screen with the black areas. This cropping will NOT fill the display screen unless the aspect ratio of the encoded cropped video is the same as the aspect ratio of the screen being displayed or you have the Fill/Zoom setting on in the play screen.