[Macworld]

Post your comments for HandBrake remains a rockin' rippin' application here

[AlanStall]

The only thing I wish Handbrake had was a good User's Guide that explained all the settings succinctly. I know the information is out there but hard to get at. Something between absolute beginner "select the presets" and advance videographer.

I mainly want to rip movies/TV programs for archival and playing on laptops on the road. I'm willing to give up space for quality but it's not clear to me what the trade-offs are for keeping Constant quality at 60% or 80% or 90%. Would it be better to do a 2X pass? Time is a concern but not a major one. I set a que up and let it go overnight.
Bottom line is Handbrake is indispensable. Now if they would only get an "official: clean 64-bit version of VLC.

[pcharles]

For a long time I was using Handbrake, but it always seemed to take forever. I recently purchased a Turbo H.264 HD for a different purpose and found that it does a superb (and FAST) job of converting folders from applications like Ripit. On my Macbook, it seem 2-3 times faster than handbrake alone. If Handbrake supported Turbo, then I imagine it would also pick up speed.

[kresh]

So it is still not taking advantage of OpenCL then?

[Chris Breen]

pcharles, on 02 March 2010 - 11:46 AM, said:

If Handbrake supported Turbo, then I imagine it would also pick up speed.

It would. Unfortunately, Turbo enhances only QuickTime encoding. HandBrake uses a different encoder.

[AppleOne]

The big seller for me is the preview. If you make even a ten-second clip for the preview, you can hear if the sound is being converted correctly, too.

The subtitle feature is handy, but it is only for a limited number of formats.

[Chris Breen]

AlanStall, on 02 March 2010 - 11:29 AM, said:

The only thing I wish Handbrake had was a good User's Guide that explained all the settings succinctly.

You might take a look at our Beyond HandBrake's Defaults article. It addresses HandBrake 0.9.3, but there's enough information in there that's applicable to the current version of HandBrake that you might gain better understanding of what these settings do.

[rumplestiltskin]

pcharles, on 02 March 2010 - 11:46 AM, said:

For a long time I was using Handbrake, but it always seemed to take forever. I recently purchased a Turbo H.264 HD for a different purpose and found that it does a superb (and FAST) job of converting folders from applications like Ripit. On my Macbook, it seem 2-3 times faster than handbrake alone. If Handbrake supported Turbo, then I imagine it would also pick up speed.

If it supported the TurboH264, it would be using the hardware in that device for the encoding and not the x264 encoding libraries it normally uses. I'm not dismissing the TurboH264 (I also own one and, occasionally find a use for it - mostly plugged into an older PPC Mac). There are a few apps that do use the TurboH264 but also provide additional tweaking possibilities (beyond that which the TurboH264 app gives you).

On my 27" C2D 3.06GHz iMac, Handbrake takes about 35 minutes to transcode a 90-100 minute movie directly from a DVD. My settings are based on the AppleTV preset but tweaked a little. BTW: encoding at a high quality to a smaller file size (like for a legacy iPod) seems to take longer, probably because it has to work harder to provide top quality at that lower bitrate.

[AlanStall]

Chris Breen, on 02 March 2010 - 12:13 PM, said:

pcharles, on 02 March 2010 - 11:46 AM, said:

If Handbrake supported Turbo, then I imagine it would also pick up speed.

It would. Unfortunately, Turbo enhances only QuickTime encoding. HandBrake uses a different encoder.

Chris,
It would be wonderful if you could do a comparative review of different encoders looking at speed, file size, and output quality. Following pcharles' comment I would happily pay for Turbo (been thinking of getting it for a while) but since I was happy with the quality of Handbrake didn't want to make a change unless I would get equivalent quality. Thanks

[Chris Breen]

AlanStall, on 02 March 2010 - 12:29 PM, said:

It would be wonderful if you could do a comparative review of different encoders looking at speed, file size, and output quality. Following pcharles' comment I would happily pay for Turbo (been thinking of getting it for a while) but since I was happy with the quality of Handbrake didn't want to make a change unless I would get equivalent quality. Thanks

We think so too. Stay tuned!

[AlanStall]

Chris Breen, on 02 March 2010 - 12:16 PM, said:

AlanStall, on 02 March 2010 - 11:29 AM, said:

The only thing I wish Handbrake had was a good User's Guide that explained all the settings succinctly.

You might take a look at our Beyond HandBrake's Defaults article. It addresses HandBrake 0.9.3, but there's enough information in there that's applicable to the current version of HandBrake that you might gain better understanding of what these settings do.

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks

[AlanStall]

Chris Breen, on 02 March 2010 - 12:30 PM, said:

AlanStall, on 02 March 2010 - 12:29 PM, said:

It would be wonderful if you could do a comparative review of different encoders looking at speed, file size, and output quality. Following pcharles' comment I would happily pay for Turbo (been thinking of getting it for a while) but since I was happy with the quality of Handbrake didn't want to make a change unless I would get equivalent quality. Thanks

We think so too. Stay tuned!

I hate teases ;-) But then again I gave my Macbook to my daughter and am waiting for an i5 Macbook. Just add to my list of waits.

[backtomacintosh]

How do you get the 64 bit version to work?

I tried but had to revert to revert to the 32 bit version in order to get it to work.

It still seems faster than the older version of HB that's on my MBP.

[Chris Breen]

backtomacintosh, on 02 March 2010 - 01:28 PM, said:

How do you get the 64 bit version to work?

You need a 64-bit version of VLC. Here is the 64-bit 1.0.2 version.