Nice work with the Wiki, although it appears we are now up to number 3 as far as Video encoding Wikis go.

Anyway, following on from my previous post, I encoded my test episode of IT Crowd using the "mobile-mp4" preset (fast encode, small file) and the results were as follows:-

Size: 706 x 574
File Size: 83,180KB (Date Rate: 325kbps)


Whilst the file size and encode speed were great, the resulting image on my N900 was awful.

I got huge vertical pillar boxes on the left and right and the image was still distorted (too stretched vertically) and the picture itself was very patchy.


I then encoded the episode with the other preset (baseline@3.0) and the result was:

Size: 720 x 448
File Size: 316,106 (Date Rate: 1693kpbs)

Vertical pillar boxes were a lot smaller this time round (almost full screen) and the image quality was much better...... on a par with my previous tests, but the file size is way over the top given I got a similar picture quality from 163MB (640x368) file.

Deleted preset xml - format was confusing people.

A third page on video encoding? N900_Video_Encoding has been merged with http://wiki.maemo.org/Video_encoding

There are two things which people should be interested in:

1. What tools can I use for my N900, N8x0 and 770 for various OSes to transcode video/rip DVDs?
2. What are the limits of the device if I'm doing it myself manually?

Jaffa, in the other thread on the wiki, you suggested making this page a sub-page. I think that's an excellent idea. It was never meant as a replacement: it's a beginners walk-thru for bears of very little brain so they don't take three days and need 20 people the way I did.

Please can you put in the links so people who want to know more about encoding can find your page, and people who just want to know 'how to make it work' can find mine. Thanks!!

I have a pretty foolproof setup now, to encode the original PAL DVD widescreen at full resolution (720x304 or whatever), H264, 25fps and AAC audio into a perfectly playable with excellent quality MP4 in the standard media player, no delays with seeking, etc., . PAL is stored at 720x576 which I totally forgot this, never checking that the Wiki settings were for NTSC, it kept crashing Handbrake.

Here is what you do for PAL DVDs:

Necessary: 1. Container: MP4
Necessary: 2. Select Web-Optimized
Necessary: 3. Picture:
- (i) Frstly, select None for Anamorphic
- (iii) Then, select Custom for Anamorphic
4. Video Filters:
- (i) Decomb set to Default
5. Video: Unchanged (default is H264/x264, Constant Quality 60.78%)
6. Audio: Unchanged (depends on your source obviously. default is 1st audio track, AAC(faac) and Dolby Prologic II, 48KHz, 160kbit/s)
7. Subtitles: Unchanged (as you like)
8. Chapters: Unchanged
Necessary: 9. Advanced:
- (i) Reference Frames: 4
- (ii) B-Frames: 0 (disables B-Frames)
- (iii) CABAC Entropy Coding: unticked (switches this off)

And you are good to go.

Notes:
(1) If you don't select Web-optimized, it will not play and give you a Media Format Error when you try and load it.
(2) The Anamorphic settings first to None and then Custom brings up the proper resolution for the final video. For example, V For Vendetta is 720x304, Run Lola Run is 720x384. You will see the correct final resolution when you select Custom. At the bottom of the Anamorphic settings, you will also see the Display Size resolution. This varies and you can ignore it - movies will be different here, e.g., some moves may be 1024x304 (Matrix Reloaded), 1024x400 (Akira), 1024x384 (Goodbye Lenin). If you mess with it, to reset the Anamorphic settings to what will work, Select Strict (default), then None, then Custom.
(3) Quality: should be excellent, in a small size. I have done several now that stream over the network or play on the memory of the N900 directly, all are coming in from ~ 700-1000MB in size for 1.5-2hr movies.

Indeed, which is the intent of the Video encoding page. The number of people who should care about random fiddling is lower than the number of people who just want it to work (which is why I wrote tablet-encode with its preset-based design in the first place!)

Well, there is no "your page" and "my page"; and although I can edit documents and find that very satisfying, I've got lots of Hermes stuff to be working on in the limited Maemo-oriented time I've got.

I would say, from experience, that links aren't the answer (which is why editing is harder, but better, than creating new pages); rather a consistent and maintained document which addresses multiple readers' issues. IMHO.

Hi guys

Just wondering what I am doing wrong here. I have been trying to work this out reading these very helpful threads for 3 days now (Sad huh) and can't get the "better quality preset" to work from the wiki. The mobile-mp4 one seems to work but I would like a better quality result but with the baseline one I just get a huge handbrake error and it closes or rejects the source. Any ideas? I think I saved them and imported correctly. I am using handbrakes latest version on Vista x64. Odd only one preset works. Any help would be great as Handbrake seems to have loads of support here. I really don't want to have to search for something else. I have spent even longer doing that

Thanks

I have added my Step-by-step guide to the Handbrake bit of the Wiki - basically because I could have done with some handholding step by step when i started fiddling with this a few days ago!

Hi Pete,

I tried your settings, but to my eyes, the resulting image quality was the same as what I was getting with my settings, but mine was half the file size.

Can you please try encoding one of your DVD's with the following settings and see how you think it compares to the output from your settings.

1. Select Source VIDEO_TS folder

2. Select iPhone & iPod Touch settings
(NB: Anamorphic will be set to NONE)

3. Tick Keep Aspect Ratio

4. Change Width to 640 (for 1.78 source, Handbrake should then set Height to 368 or 352)

5. In VIDEO Tab, set Quality to Constant Quality 56.86% RF:22

(All other settings stay same as iPhone/iPod Touch)


Your feedback on the comparative image quality would be appreciated.


You can actually set different widths if you like eg 704 (gives height 400) or 720 (gives height 416).

If you want to get a width of 800, you need to set the HEIGHT to 448 and Handbrake will then set the width to 800 (or sometimes 784 depending on source).

I have tried all of these different sizes on the same test video, but my eyes can't tell any difference in the output. Only difference is the FILE SIZE (720 x 416 is almost double the size of 640 x 368).


NB: I don't tick Web Optimized because I am only using the internal memory of the N900,


I don't know what the right answer is here...... I'm just trying to find the best compromise between high quality image and small file size for the N900.

Try using the setting I am using (as per the above post to PETE) and you will definitely get a much better result than the mobile-mp4 preset.

Essentially, I am just using the Handbrake iPhone / iPod Touch preset, but tweaking the resolution to take advantage of the N900's big screen res and reducing the Constant Quality factor to lower the file size without reducing image quality (to my eyes anyway).