This might not be the best place for this question but I honestly can’t think of another place, but if you know of one please let me know. But I figured someone here might have the experience I’m looking for.
I own the discs for various Star Trek series and everything Stargate. What I’m trying to do is use handbrake to encode them to put them on Plex. But everything I try, it just looks worse. Is there a repository of like recommended settings for various media?
Care to demonstrate ‘looks worse’? Are visual artifacts showing up? Are the sources DVD or BD? What encoding speed is in use? What special parameters are specified (More Settings box) in the video tab?
Voyager is DVD. Used MakeMKV to get the files, and used VLC to preview it. In the first episode that caretaker I was using the scene with the doctor due to the fog effects the lighting movements everything. The handbrake preview you could definitely tell like gradient bands, and when the doctor walks up to the camera and you can really see him I pause at the exact same moment between the raw file and the preview file and there was a lot of… I’m going to call it distortion in the details on his face, especial around the eyes. (Seen just before meet the caretaker)
Video editing isn’t something I’m familiar with so I’m not really sure what terms to use. I might be able to recreate, but I’m trying some of the other suggestions so not sure if I accurately remember what settings I had.
Banding and blocking are associated with low bitrates. Bitrate is a key consideration in video encoding. Either it is constant, where you set a value of 2000 kbits, 5600, etc. and Handbrake sticks to it, or variable, where you set a quality rate factor, and Handbrake then adjusts bitrate on the fly to maintain quality X. Variable approaches will provide an average bitrate.
Occasionally DVD sources will compress really inefficiently: no matter how much bitrate you throw at it, the encoded result is substantially worse than source. But typically I’ve found RF 18-21 does a good job. I use mediainfo to ascertain bitrates and other information.
I pulled these settings from a DVD profile I made. They go in the ‘More Settings’ box
bframes=16:ref=16:fast-pskip=0:dct-decimate=0:aq-mode=2:aq-strength=1.0:qcomp=0.65:me=umh:me-range=32:psy-rd=0,0:deblock=-3,-3