The Power User's Guide to Video Encoding with Handbrake

Whether you own an iPod touch, Zune HD, Nintendo DSi, or any number of other portable devices, there's one tool that makes easy work out of ripping DVDs and converting incompatible video files into manageable formats: Handbrake. This wonderful utility has just about everything you could ask for, including robust compatibility, a slick interface, and snappy performance. And if that weren't enough, the developers have chosen to give the program away for free, no strings (or trialware) attached.

We realize we're probably preaching to the choir and there's a good chance you've used Handbrake before, if not frequently. But do you know how to create, backup, and transfer your own custom settings for the Xbox 360, PS3, and other popular media players not included by default? Do you know how to encode a copy protected DVD with the least amount off fuss? We do, and on the following pages, we'll guide you through a series of advanced tips for getting the most out of Handbrake.

How To Create Your Own Custom Profiles

The latest version of Handbrake (0.9.4 at the time of this writing) packs a bunch of new features into an already stellar product, but it also strips away some functionality you may have grown accustomed to, including preset profiles for the PSP, PS3, and Xbox 360. According to the developers:

"Quite frankly, [these presets] didn't work well. None of the development team members own the devices, so testing was minimal and support was non-existent. Keeping up with the firmware vagaries and ambiguous specifications of these devices was not fun -- we get enough of that from Apple's kit, and those we have around to test on. The new "Normal" preset should work perfectly fine on any device that supports standard Main Profile H.264 with AAC-LC audio in an MP4 file, which the PS3 and 360 ostensibly do."

We can certainly dig the new Normal preset, which works well with a range of devices, but a little customization can go a long way, and we're going to show you how to make your own profiles.

Open up Handbrake and take note of the Presets column on the right-hand side. Handbrake comes with a handful of pre-configured settings, most of which are Apple-centric. To create your own custom profile, you would just click the Add button. In the pop-up box that appears, give your custom profile a name and press Add.

There are seven tabs to navigate on the left-hand side of the main window, all of which can be customized. When you're finished setting up your profile, just right-click it and select Save Changes. But what settings should you use? Equally important, what does each setting do? Let's have a look.

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Advanced Settings Explained

Reference Frames, Motion Estimation Method, Pyramidal B-Frames, oh my! Don't worry if you don't know what any of these do, we're going to give you a quick rundown, and then show you the exact settings to use for a variety of popular devices.

Reference Frames: Higher values yield better quality videos, but also take more time to encode. Set it too high and you could run into playback issues.

Mixed References: Video frames are divided into blocks called 'macroblocks.' Checking this box (and thus turning Mixed References on) allows different references to be used for different parts of each macroblock, potentially resulting in a higher quality rip.

B-Frames: Stands for bi-directional frame and is a compression method. Handbrake's developers recommend using a higher value (9-16) for animated content.

Adaptive B-Frames: Allows x264 to determine the number of B-frames to use.

Direct Prediction: Tells x264 what method to use when guessing motion for certain parts of a B-frame. If set to spatial, x264 will compare parts of the current frame, whereas temporal tells x264 to compare against the following P-frame. Handbrake's developers recommend choosing spatial over temporal.

Weighted B-Frames: Rather than base a B-frame's motion compensation on frames both and after with equal influence, weighted B-frames takes into consideration the distance from the frame being encoded.

Pyramidal B-Frames: As a High Profile feature, Handbrake's developers warn that enabling this setting will prevent your video from playing in Quicktime. What it does is treat each previous B-frame as a reference, resulting in higher quality, lower bitrate rips, but "at the expense of complexity."

Motion Estimation Method: Selects the way motion is detected by x264, ranked in order from the fastest encode time (at the expense of quality) to slowest, with Diamond being the fastest.

Subpixel Motion Estimation: Determines how x264 makes decisions about motion estimation, with higher levels increasing quality, and lower levels resulting in faster encode times.

Analysis: Determines how to divide up frames to capture details. In most cases, you'll want to leave this on "all."

8x8 DCT Blocks: Another High Profile feature, checking this box tells x264 to break frames down into 8x8 blocks for slightly better quality rips.

Trellis: When used with multi-pass encoding, this is supposed to improve quality, but can also significantly slow down encoding.

CABAC Entropy: Short for Contact Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding and is capable of reducing the bitrate. Not compatible with some popular devices.

No Fast P-Skip: Improves encoding speed by blocking on-solid colors, but also reduces quality.

No DCT Decimate: Tells x264 to "zero out" blocks when they won't be noticed by the viewer. Can be useful in reducing file sizes, but can also introduce unintended artifacts.

Deblocking: Smoothes out blocky compression artifacts. The higher the value, the more aggressive it works.

Recommended Xbox 360 Settings

• Reference Frames: 2
• Mixed References: Checked
• B-Frames: Default (3)
• Adaptive B-Frames: Off
• Direct Prediction: Automatic
• Weighted B-Frames: Checked
• Pyramidal B-Frames: Unchecked
• Motion Estimation Method: Uneven Multi- Hexagon
• Subpixel Motion Estimation: 9
• Motion Estimation Range: Default (16)
• Analysis: All
• 8x8 DCT: Unchecked
• CABAC Entropy Coding: Checked
• Trellis: 0
• Psychovisual Rate Distortion: All the way to the right
• Psychovisual Trellis: N/A
• No Fast P-Skip: Checked
• No DCT-Demicmate: Unchecked
• Deblocking: -2 (top), -1 (bottom)

Playstation 3

Starting from scratch isn't always the best way to approach this, and that's sometimes the case with the PS3. Rather than create a brand new profile, select High Profile (under the Regular heading) and leave the default settings. In the Destination field, manually change the file extension to .mp4.

iPod / iPod Touch / iPhone

As we previously mentioned, Handbrake is very much an Apple-centric program, and if you own of these devices, you're in luck. Unlike the PS3, Xbox 360, and PSP, the latest version of Handbrake includes preset profiles for the iPod, iPod touch, and iPhone. Just select and rip!

Playstation Portable (PSP)

Another casualty of the Handbrake's latest release, the program no longer includes a PSP profile. There are different ways you can approach this, but we've had good luck following tedtaylor's suggestion over on Handbrake's forum.

Start off by selecting the Apple-Universal profile. Next, head over to the Picture tab and select None from the Anamorphic pull-down menu. You should now able to the set the width and height of the video to 480 (h) x 272 (w).

Now navigate to the Video tab and click on the Avg Bitrate (kbps): radio button. Change the value to 768. If you run into problems playing video on your PSP, try a lower setting.

Recommended Zune HD Settings

As one of the newest kids on the block, Handbrake also turns a cold shoulder to Zune HD owners, at least in terms of a preset profile. That's okay, because like the Xbox 360 profile, we're going to create our own. Follow the same steps to add a new profile, and then input the following settings:

• Reference Frames: 1
• Mixed References: N/A
• B-Frames: Default 0
• Adaptive B-Frames: N/A
• Direct Prediction:N/A
• Weighted B-Frames:N/A
• Pyramidal B- Frames:N/A
• Motion Estimation Method: Default (Hexagon)
• Subpixel Motion Estimation: 6
• Motion Estimation Range: N/A
• Analysis: Default
• 8x8 DCT: Unchecked
• CABAC Entropy Coding: Unchecked
• Trellis: N/A
• Psychovisual Rate Distortion: All the way to the right
• Psychovisual Trellis: All the way to the left
• No Fast P-Skip: Checked
• No DCT-Demicmate: Unchecked
• Deblocking: Default

For HD videos, navigate to the Picture tab, select None under the Anamorphic pull-down menu, and set the width and height to 1280x720.