Handbrake Preset For Mac

Official presets from HandBrake 0.10.x are still available under Legacy New JSON-based preset system including command line support New JSON-based API for interacting with libhb. Downloading and installing the Serato HandBrake preset: Quit HandBrake. Download either the Mac or Windows preset, and unzip it to your desktop. Open HandBrake. Click the Presets menu and select Import. Browse to your desktop, select the appropriate file and click Open. When you launch HandBrake there should now be a new preset option, named. Feb 22, 2017 - But there's a problem with Handbrake and macOS Sierra. You can see the presets drawer at the right of the window. Oh, I didn't mean to suggest it wasn't beneficial I was just pointing out that it does increase the encoding time a bit. Personally I use it (or do it after in subler when I tag my movies). Both handbrake and subler 'optimize' exactly the same way. The other presets besides ATV3 use loose mod 16. Loose mod 2 is much the same as strict.

Optimizing Video Encoder Settings Optimizing or fine tuning of video encoders comes basically down to:. What file size do I want?.

What quality do we want?. How fast should encoding go? Personally I believe that fine tuning should be a balance between file size and quality. The time to encode a movie should be irrelevant – sometimes the time difference is really not worth it, for a few minutes extra you will get a better quality and/or smaller file size.

The times that encoding a movie from DVD took 8 hours are long gone, most of my computers can convert a DVD easily under 15 minutes. So based on personal experience (note that I’m not an expert) a few pointers: The chosen file format, or “container”, has hardly any effect on file size or quality (MP4, MKV, AVI). Since the “container” file has a minimal or even negligible impact on file size or quality. Therefor I’d recommend using the container that is most compatible with your devices and/or software. AVI is widely supported but MP4 is definitely the strong upcoming format to use. MKV is (in my humble opinion) better, but not as widely supported. The common containers (AVI, MP4, MKV) typically support a variety of so called codecs (en Coder/ Decoders) and the selection of the codec is what influences quality and file size.

Preferred setting in HandBrake: MP4. A great codec is not a guarantee for quality but has a great influence on file size. Some codecs (en Coder/ Decoder) are more efficient than others when it comes to compressing and storage. The compression settings can make it that an old MPEG-2 codec can actually out perform a modern codec like h264. These settings or options can also be the root of all problems. For example: older devices that are h264 capable might not yet support the newer “options” of this codec, resulting in crappy or even unplayable files.

Preferred setting in HandBrake: h264. High bitrates do not guarantee quality but seriously impact file size. Although in general there is a good correlation between quality and bitrate, a higher bitrate is not a guarantee for quality.

For example when transcoding a existing MP4 file with a low bitrate, to an MP4 with a high bitrate is total nonsense. It will only increase the file size but most certainly not increase quality – and probably even make the quality worse. Note that so called “single pass” encoding can result in a less good quality or less efficient compression when compared to “multi pass” or “double pass” encoding – but that doesn’t have to be the case.

The good thing of “double pass” – and that is just my opinion – is that it does a pre-flight analysis of your video source, allowing it to better anticipate changes in the video. “Single pass” encoding however has become significantly better these days. Rule of thumb: When converting never use a bitrate higher than the source file. Quality Setting for “Constant Quality” can be overdone.

HandBrake has a slider at “Constant Quality” allowing you to set an RF value, between 50 (low quality) and 0 (highest quality). The default value is set to “20” which can be considered adequate for a DVD copy. For HD video (720p and up) an RF of 21 – 23 is recommended, and some even recommend “30” – but you’ll have to play a little with this to find what works best for you.

Also keep in mind that RF=0 means NO COMPRESSION at all, which is useless. You’d end up with a gigantic file, larger than the original file, and with zero improvements on the picture quality. You will have to keep in mind that DVD’s and even Blu-Ray discs are compressed in such a way that they already come with “loss” – i.e. It kind-a has it’s own RF value already. Going below that value will not add improvements to your copy, and will only increase the file size unnecessarily. Rule of thumb: DVD RF 20, BLU-RAY RF 22 Doing things in a hurry gives half-assed results.

This rule goes for pretty much anything in life: the difference between doing it fast and doing it well. The same goes for converting movies/video. The faster you try to encode a movie, the less “good” (in size and quality) the result will be. Settings like “fast” basically means: we’re doing our best to maintain a reasonable quality, but speed of conversion is our main goal. So the slower we go, the more attention your encoder will pay to detail!

The Placebo setting goes totally nuts on quality, and takes forever to complete. Preferred HandBrake setting: Medium (which gives a nice balance between speed and quality). Sizing Video: Do crop the black borders, but do not “upscale” video. Like with increasing bitrates from a low bitrate source, upscaling (or enlarging) the video resolution is probably one of the worst things you can do. First of all, you’re not adding any quality improvements, instead you’re adding only more useless data which results in a larger file for no good reason. Second of all: Your playback devices is typically much better at “upscaling” if needed. Under normal circumstances, HandBrake will do a fine job in determining size, aspect ration, and cropping – it bases these settings on the information it gets from the video source you’re using.

If you’d like though, you can look under the option “Picture Settings” and tweak cropping, size and aspect ratio. Just do not make the size more than what HandBrake suggests by default. When it comes to cropping, HandBrake will remove the excessive “data” automatically, by removing the black borders often seen in movies (the gray area in the image on the right).

Please note: Cropping the black bars doesn’t really save a lot of disk space. It will however, as correctly noted by Thomas, have a potential negative side effect when it comes to playback. The cropped video (removing the black bars) will make it harder for devices to determine what the correct aspect ratio and/or resolutions are and as a result in possibly distorted playback.

Movie versus Cartoon What do we notice? The first thing you’d notice is that cartoons appear to be using a smaller palette of colors, shapes are simplified and filled with one color and there are hardly any shadings or patterns when compared to a regular movie. In the example above: simply look at the difference in fine details when you look at the hair – the picture on the left contains MUCH more data than the cartoon on the right. These special settings use these characteristics to compress better and more efficient. HandBrake – Encoder presets for h264 HandBrake h264 Presets Preset Details none Use when you’re not sure what to use – uses HandBrake’s defaults. Film Use this for regular video and modern 3D animated movies. Animation Use for classical animations (including Manga).

Grain Use this for movies with high levels of grain (for example ancient movies). Stillimage Use this for still images, for example a photo slideshow.

Psnr Only use if you know what is (not useful for normal use). Ssim Only use if you know what is (not useful for normal use). Zerolatency Only useful for streaming video. Preferred HandBrake setting: Match your video type or none if unsure.

I do agree with most of the article, except for the x264 preset. You advice to set it to placebo, but the only thing this does is make the file a little smaller at the expense of a lot of encoding time and sometimes even some quality. The default setting ‘medium’ will be sufficient in most cases. My experience is that everything from fast to placebo is in the same ballpark; the differences are in the order of 3-7% in file size between steps and the quality does not improve with lower settings. This all by the same CRF of course Rudi. Thanks Otis for taking the effort to post a “Thank you” – it’s much appreciated, Just some additional info To make things more complicated: a newer codec has surfaced (x265 or h265 aka ), at this moment the quality should be the same as 264, yet compression should be better.

I did a few tests and the quality is indeed good, and as far as I can see you could gain about 8% better compression, but there is a big but. 1) Compression is much slower (slower than realtime) 2) Not every application supports it yet hans. Thanks Hans, my cousin moved into my house when he was a baby and I was 12. He would definitely remember me. Thanks for responding. I am new to handbrake, I have a MAC and a DVD of a wedding I corridnated, did the design for, and want to showcase on a new site I’m building. I am wondering if you can recommend settings for keeping the quality of the video.

My site is and I have another iMovie style video linked from YouTube and the quality is really bad. I am remaking slideshows with iMovie hoping to figure out how to maintain high quality overall. Any suggestions would be greatly received.

Hi Heather, yep, I think I’d remember that if I’d been your cousin As for the preferred quality, I’d pick h264 and quality set to 20. Convert it and see if your like the quality when played full screen. Definitely watch fast motion scenes and see if you see too many artifacts. Decrease the Q number (20) to increase quality.

As for Audio: AAC is very good. Don’t choose a too low bitrate, but there is no use in selecting a bitrate higher than your source. As for Youtube and quality: how did you convert and upload for YouTube? There are a lot of factors why a YouTube video might look bad.

Hello Jason, I’m very open to criticism, but you could have brought it in a somewhat nicer way When I look at upscaling (for regular video), I look at playback devices with limited resolution, where the video has (almost) the same or higher resolution than the screen resolution of the playback device. With regular video, when the original video is for example 720p, and the screen of say your phone is 720p as well, then upscaling to 4K doesn’t add value. It only increases file size, and might even make the end result a tiny bit blurry. However it is very well possible that upscaling while transcoding could result in a better video, especially when the playback device does not use any of the more advanced upscaling techniques.

So for example for playback of a 720p video on a 4K screen, where the TV does a crappy job in upscaling the video, but your transcoder does a fantastic job. Some examples can be seen in, showing how some TV’s do a great job in upscaling and others not so much. Another interesting read is (The secret of YIFI – not the highest quality, but an interesting read). Keep in mind though that most of those reading this article typically look for the best valance between quality and file size. So your comment is valid for very particular applications (both software and purpose) for sure. Thank you though for the tip. I should take a look one of these days, unfortunately it only runs on Windows.

Note however that VidCoder is a GUI for the HandBrake engine – from the VidCoder website: “The core encoding engine is written by the amazing HandBrake team). VidCoder is however, is supposed to have a much easier UI than HandBrake. Note: As I have read elsewhere, the upcoming x265/h265 might be a better codec choice as well, although compressing takes much more time, it could reduce the file size up to 10% maintaining the same or sometimes better video quality at lower bitrates. I had been doing video encoding for awhile mostly for testing. In past I was know nothing about Video Codec I thought file extensions has same video codec.avi is AVI and mp4 is MPEG4.

And I was using many crape softwares that pretend they have best compression methods. Until couple years ago I notice most of online videos are using same Codec (H264). I do tests converting my old video to this codec using Handbreak and the result was shucking for me. What h264 saying about it’s gives double in quality or half in size was absolutely true, I did test comparing mpeg-4 with same compressing setting, I got the double of file size an much lower quality, I even feel the other codes focusing in loosing quality to reduce file size with same old compressing methods. Last I did testing on h265 (HEVC) and again the results was amazing, I never thought some one will beat H264 in compressing and video quality, but the did, even it’s still new technology but the improvement were very notable, I got at less 20% file size reduce even 40% in some cases with max compress setting, but I cant tell about quality due the different way that h265 compress image use, all my test on HEVC I use already compressed video so I cant judge on it right now, if some one have uncompressed or lossless video you can do better tests.

Both look pretty much the same when it comes to quality. As a viewer I cannot distinguish any difference. M4V is actually almost the same as MP4, if you’d have an MP4 you can rename it to M4V and it would work just fine. As far as I understand the only differences are: – M4V is used specifically for Apple devices – M4V can contain DRM (by Apple) to protect it from being copied More details:,. So I would say: keep working with MP4, unless you have Apple devices, but even then you can just rename the MP4 to M4V. Hi Hans I am exploring Handbreak and trying to find the best preset for keeping my VOB to MP4 conversions the same as my DVD in terms of quality. I don’t care about file size or encoding time.

Quality is my main concern. I own a few DVD’s that I want to play on my Plex server which does not support VOB files and I don’t want to have to swop DVD disks constantly. I ripped these DVD’s to VOB files with DVD Shrink.

I now need to convert these VOB files to MP4 in order to make them compatible via Plex. Can you point me to a preset that can set this up in Handbreak for me or at least let me know which settings I should change from the default (if any) to get the desired result? Thanks a million Anyx. Hi Anyx, I’m not aware of the perfect preset you have to keep in mind that when you’re transcoding one codec (MPEG2) to another (h264 or h265), that there will always be loss.

If you set “Constant Quality” to 0 (zero) then you should get the max quality. I have never tried this though, and I have no clue about the impact in quality.

Additionally you can set the preset to “slow” or “medium”, the slower, the more effort is taking to get it perfect, but also the more time it takes. H264 will be much faster than h265, but some users claim that h265 might result in a better quality. I cannot confirm this though. Hi Devon, sounds like the decryption (CSS) of the DVD is not working for the DVD you’re trying to rip. This can happen, especially since the HandBrake team has abandoned the decryption part. You have a few options 1) Get the latest libdvdcss (I’ve described that in these articles:, ) 2) Rip the entire DVD before running it through HandBrake.

Since I don’t know which OS you’re running, for Windows you could use for example, but there are other tools that can do this. 3) Use another ripping and converting tool, like for example (available for Mac or Windows, unfortunately commercial but works very well – I think they offer a trial version so you can test your DVD).

How interesting. Thanks for this rather nice rundown.

Didn’t even know much about the x264 tune option. While my laptop is slower than molasses, I’m trying to crush files as small as I could while keeping some good quality to upload, as I’m always data capped on my cell. I’ll have to try a few of these next time I run my compression rounds. And I guess I’ll stop using “Very Slow” preset then haha. What would you recommend for Game Recordings for the Tune setting? Been recording Super Mario Maker (which has Mario Bros, Mario Bros 3, Super Mario Bros, and New Super Mario Bros U) and trying to pick a good option. Since 3 of the 4 game style modes are 2D sprites, I was thinking of using the “Animation” setting.

Or should I just leave it on “Film”? Thank you again ^^ Kit Kit Ballard. Thanks for the compliment. Yeah the “very slow” preset is indeed what it says very slow hahah. For game recordings you could test “animation” indeed, especially with games like Mario they look mostly like animation anyway. Even the 3D Maria variant would do (probably) well with “animation” as well.

For more advanced 3D games, you could consider “film”, but then I’m thinking about modern games, like Call of Duty etc, where the surroundings and game play looks very much real-life. Well, of course it could be that your BluRay player is picky about it’s h264 files. Not sure if “ Profile” and “Level” will help – but it might be worth doing some tests with those settings – you could give the “ Baseline” profile a try. More info on profiles and levels can be found on this.

Another issue might be your thumbdrive – there are a few models out there notoriously slow, which, with normal use, might not be that noticeable or obvious since your computer might be caching file transfers. Especially with USB 2.0 drives; test a regular USB harddrive, or another USB stick. Another thing I do, not sure if it helps, is checking “ Web optimized” and “ iPod 5G support“. It’s something I do automatically from the first day I started using Handbrake, not even sure if that even still makes sense to do. Hi Hans, Thanks for the reply. Anyway what I was aiming for is a descent pc or laptop just for encoding my dvds to x264.

My old pc is okay but for a 2hr video to encode for 3days seems a drain to the pc. I’m planning to buy a new one so I was asking inputs on what specs should I look for if my plan was to use it for encoding. I am not after a super so fast encoding time like minutes just may be a fair balance between quality and encoding time may be cutting that 3 days time in half that would make me happy.