Question Handbrake questions regarding smaller files

GunsMadeAmericaFree

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
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In the past, I've been able to compress my DVD's in Handbrake to about 700 megabytes in size. I got a Blu-Ray drive for the first time, and archived the Blu-Ray movie. It ended up being about 1.5 GB. When I tried compressing it more, it always ended up being blocky.

I'd like to get the file size down to about 1 GB, without the blockiness. Can anyone recommend settings to do this for h.264?

Thanks!
 

TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
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In the past, I've been able to compress my DVD's in Handbrake to about 700 megabytes in size. I got a Blu-Ray drive for the first time, and archived the Blu-Ray movie. It ended up being about 1.5 GB. When I tried compressing it more, it always ended up being blocky.

I'd like to get the file size down to about 1 GB, without the blockiness. Can anyone recommend settings to do this for h.264?

Thanks!
There are no magical settings, h.264 needs x amount of Mb per minute of movie, nothing anybody can do about it.
You could try with x265 which has better compression.
 

GunsMadeAmericaFree

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Jan 23, 2007
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There are no magical settings, h.264 needs x amount of Mb per minute of movie, nothing anybody can do about it.
You could try with x265 which has better compression.
Limited to h.264, because the computers at work have no support for h.265, and the tech guys won't add it for the netbook PC's, which are locked down. Wish I could convince them to add VLC Media Player.

I guess I've been prettty happy with the ~700 megabyte files from DVD, and figured that starting with Blu Ray and going to a Gigabyte would give a better resulting video. However, I guess with the larger Blu-Ray original file size, that might be asking too large of a compression percentage. Hmm.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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I guess I've never paid much attention to that - I think it was AAC, and I set it to 96k, because I've never been able to tell any difference with it set lower.

only way to cut down on size further is to do multi pass encoding. AAC Stereo 64k is probably good enough. Also remember DVD is 480P, BluRay is 1080P. You could aim for 720P.
 
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lakedude

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2009
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My 700 MB CD sized DVD rips definitely lowered the resolution but were still acceptable quality.

The program I used automatically adjusted all the parameters, including resolution to achieve the best quality at a given final file size.

Assuming the same rules apply to Handbrake you definitely need to lower your target resolution to less than HD. Maybe try 480 and see if you like the results better.

Also pay attention to how much space the audio takes up. Remember back in the day an entire 700 MB CD was filled to the brim with 80 minutes of just sound. It is absolutely remarkable to me that we can now fit a 2 hour movie 🎬 with both sound and video in a file of the same capacity.

Thanks compression!
 

ElFenix

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Mar 20, 2000
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In the past, I've been able to compress my DVD's in Handbrake to about 700 megabytes in size. I got a Blu-Ray drive for the first time, and archived the Blu-Ray movie. It ended up being about 1.5 GB. When I tried compressing it more, it always ended up being blocky.

I'd like to get the file size down to about 1 GB, without the blockiness. Can anyone recommend settings to do this for h.264?

Thanks!
what settings are you using currently?

re: reducing resolution
as your bit rate decreases you can gain quality back by reducing resolution.

1647459819305.png

the rows are bitrate, the columns are resolution, and the numbers are the VMAF of the resulting encodes. as you can see, for this sample, 720p results in better fidelity once bitrate drops below 3600 kbps, and going down to 540p results in better quality once bitrate drops below 1200 kbps.

 
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GunsMadeAmericaFree

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Jan 23, 2007
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I believe it was 720p. Maybe the problem I'm having is that I'm used to using h.265 for maximum compression, but I've been forced to use h.264 because the computers at work won't work with the h.265. That, coupled with the much larger original Blu-Ray file, are probably what are either giving me blocky graphics or much larger end files.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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I believe it was 720p. Maybe the problem I'm having is that I'm used to using h.265 for maximum compression, but I've been forced to use h.264 because the computers at work won't work with the h.265. That, coupled with the much larger original Blu-Ray file, are probably what are either giving me blocky graphics or much larger end files.


What kind of computer cannot playback h.265? Also, why are you watching video on company hardware lol.
 

GunsMadeAmericaFree

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Jan 23, 2007
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Sometimes on a lazy day, after getting our work done, we like to let our students watch a movie, and not all movies are on the couple of streamers we have access to. For whatever reason, the smartboards (combination netbook pc and touch screen TV) do not support files encoded with h.265, but they will play h.264. Tech support guys won't install vlc media player or mess with codecs, so I'm stuck with h.264. Not a big deal, really, because I've been able to upload the files to my Google Drive without too much trouble.
 

lakedude

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2009
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So try a resolution like 480p or 432p and see if that helps.

You might be expecting too much because you are massively shrinking/compressing a video, not using the newest most efficient codec, and then displaying the results on a large screen, essentially magnifying 🔎 any imperfections.