That's really interesting,
@dishe. I'd love to try out your settings, if you can ever find time to type them out. While I do enjoy the quality I'm getting with my current settings, I'm always open to better methods and more hard drive space.
Ok, so here's the presets I'm using, but keep in mind that video encoding is not an exact science, so feel free to modify tweaks for the sort of video you're using. Animated content, for example an episode of the Simpsons, have far less detail in the frame to preserve and can get away with more compression without visible artifacts. A film with a lot of fast movement like a Marvel superhero movie you need to keep up with the action. I'll note what settings are worth changing where applicable in my opinion. I'm using Handbrake for the encode.
On the first tab, under picture:
- Manually enter 720 as the width. Since the height could change depending on aspect ratio, its important to just keep the width at DV size and click "KEEP ASPECT RATIO" to let it figure out the height. Even with a preset, since resolution is variable, you must enter this each time and let it do its calculation for height since it could change.
-Anamorphic, set to none.
-Modulus is set to 2
Filters tab:
Leave everything off.
Video tab:
Codec: H.264 (x.264)
Framerate: Same as source, and variable (not constant). This is important, as not all content has the same frame rate, and re-timing it can cause juddering frames and audio sync problems. Unless its an HFR video at 60fps or something, you should not need to change it from whatever the original source is (and even then, it shouldn't be 23.98 as 60 isn't easily divided into that. If anything it should be 30, but I say leave original framerate). It always bothered me that the guides said to set it manually to 23.98 because it will only work correctly on 24p content, and potentially make anything else look bad. If the content originally was 23.98, leaving it as "same as source" would preserve it anyway.
Encoder Preset: If you have a fast computer, feel free to turn this as far to the right as you wish, as it will spend more time processing at the result of better quality in the same file size. For me, I keep it about 75% to the right as I don't want it to take so long to encode, and at some point the difference is negligible. But if you don't mind leaving it for a while and walking away, or have super fast hardware, feel free to slide it all the way to the right to be slowest- just don't blame me if it takes all night.
Encoder tune: None, but check "Fast Decode". This makes a big difference, as the Wii has trouble keeping up with the decode if this is not checked.
Encoder profile: Main (Note: I did have some decent experience with setting it to high as long as fast decode was on, but it could choke on complicated scenes, so main is safer).
Encoder level: 4.0
Avg bitrate: 1,000 kbps, check both 2-pass encoding and turbo first pass. Multi pass encoding is a great way to to get smaller file sizes at good quality, I could explain why but its outside the scope of this post. You can also turn up or down the bitrate if you want depending on the sort of video we're dealing with and how much definition you want in the picture. I find that 1,000 kbps is a good middle ground to start with, and can leave it there if you don't know what else to set it to.
Audio tab:
Mine is set to AAC at 160kbps, mixdown is Dolby Prologic II.
That should be it! Using these exact settings, I just rendered my copy of The Greatest Showman down to 877MB. And while it is clearly standard definition down from the 1080p source, it looks at least as clear as a DVD in my opinion!
