http://handbrake.fr/?article=13 https://trac.handbrake.fr/milestone/HandBrake 0.9.6 What do you guys think of it? Like? Don't like?
I think Ripbot264 is still a much better piece of software for the average encoder. Still needs too much explanation to get it going. OTOH, not much else competes for the hardcore encoder.
I tried it and hated it. My biggest gripe about it was they got rid of the target size for videos. I loved typing in 180 mb and boom my file was size was just right. Now I have to either type in the bit rate I want or try my hand at that constant quality bs slider bar thingy...yuck. I promptly uninstalled 0.9.6 and re installed 0.9.5.
Hate that as well. I'm unsure about whether there are actual differences in quality between 0.9.5 and 0.9.6, given the same settings. But the only thing stopping me from moving back to 0.9.5 is anal retentiveness at having every piece of software in my computer as up to date as reasonably possible.
I gave the latest release a fare shake and honestly I didn't notice a difference in quality between the two versions. To be fair though most of my encodes are in SD quality not HD. I mostly do tv shows and dvd rips.
I like constant quality, but I have to admit that whoever said that setting it to 20 will give good encodes is out of their mind. Maybe at native res, but most people are watching their 720X480 movies scaled up to 1920X1080 on their tvs. CQ between 13-15 and will get almost perfect encodes. File size will generally flucuate between 2.5 to 4GB per movie tho depending on noise, but if you're looking for long term backups I think it's worth the effort. I've experimented with constant size extensively, but in my experience it's never as good as CQ at the same file size. For mobile devices sure, but if you're doing serious encodes for HTPC or future proofing, in my experience constant size can't touch the latest CQ. It's still up to the user though, and I respect that people still use constant size, though I can't understand it.
