Best Handbrake MKV Settings for PBO?

[cypher1024]

Hey guys,
I've built a NAS and so I'm finally getting around to converting all of my DVDs to MKV. The thing is, it's going to take a lot of time, so I only want to do it once.

What I'm looking for is the ideal Handbrake settings to make high-quality MKVs for the PBO. Filesize doesn't really matter (since I have around 4TB of space available).

Cheers,
- Luke

[MKJ]

If filesize doesn't matter why would you convert to MKV anyway? I run an Athlon X2 Dual Core 2.1 GHz CPU, and the conversion take a tremendous amount of time. Additionally, it needs a lot of CPU power which makes the computer quite slow.

There's no such thing like the perfect setting when it comes to video conversion. The appropriate settings depend very much on the kind of orignal material. For a grainy 70s movie you'll very likely use less compression than, say, for a digital produced animation like "Cars".

For DVD or Blu Ray extras that I like to keep, I use the default video settings: Constant quality at 60.78% and switch the audio settings to AC3 pass-through. This reduces the file size by 50-60%. Picture quality is very good.

Handbrake supports batch conversion (queue). This is a nice feature. If you keep Handbrake open, it saves your settings. You just have to open the next file and change the destination settings. You have to choose subtitles manually.

[scboley]

I have a batch python script and use the default normal settings with a few added tweaks and seems no loss of quality. I have a quad amd that does a movie on avg a dvd iso to mkv takes about 30 to 40 minutes and about a gb of space per movie.

[MKJ]

Output file size, time need for compression and even frame size seem to vary quite a lot. I've justed converted a DVD iso file (7 GB) using the default settings. Output file size is 800 MB (!!), and the process took 80 minutes. That is really very good! A bunch of Blu Ray extras (M2TS files) might took much more time, and usually the compression rate is not that good.

I still don't understand why Handbrake sometimes changes the frame size. This is why I have concerns about converting to MKVs. What exactly happens during the conversion process? Why are snapshots of the original sometimes different (dimensions) from snapshots of the converted MKV? Too many imponderables for my taste. If you don't care for that, just juse Scboley's script (http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3153&page=3).

[scboley]

I got to looking at the handbrake site and found that it changes the screen dimensions automatically by auto detecting and cropping any black from around the actual video frame is why it changes the resolution. Pretty spot on as I haven't found any of mine with any framing around them at all. You want it to stop just disable the cropping feature.