Hi, I’ve been encoding with x264 for a while using this config:

• Preset: VerySlow
• 2‑pass, 4700 kbps
• tune: film
• Everything else same as source
• Config: aq-mode=3:qcomp=0.7

This gave me great results for micro 1080p.

Now I want to switch to AV1. I tested with Blade Runner 2049, and the encode took about 4–5 hours (similar to my x264 2‑pass times). But I’m not sure if my settings are optimal, because the output file size didn’t quite make sense to me.

First test:
AV1 10‑bit, preset 4, tune=vq, CRF 14, plus some advanced settings I can’t fully recall.
Result: 2 GB for a 2h40min movie.

Current test:
CRF 10, with these advanced options:
enable-qm=1:enable-variance-boost=1:film-grain-denoise=1:film-grain=12

(Left it encoding this morning, it said 5h) (btw, I use a ryzen 5 5600, it is not a best, thats why it isn't making sense to me)

Does anyone have suggestions for a good AV1 encoding setup that would be roughly equivalent to my old x264 quality (VerySlow, 4700 kbps 2‑pass, tune film)? I’m targeting transparent or near‑transparent quality for 1080p.

Thanks in advance!

I read previous people talking about reducing cores under the video tab. Trying to render some stuff with a 14900K with the oversised NZXT cooler, 4 intake and 3 exhaut fans and its hitting 95 degrees here and there. I want to be at 85 degrees or less.

How do you limit performance in rendering in the current version of Handbrake?

I understand it is very dependent on settings and what not but I’m just curious what the average speeds people get for their particular settings? It’s currently taking me a little over an hour to compress a Blu-ray using my settings (listed below). I just reinstalled windows and migrated everything from a small sata drive over to an ssd and im either crazy and missed a setting or the ssd/fresh install made handbrake 3-4x faster. Prior to the fresh install it’d take me about 4-5 hours to encode one blu-ray with my settings and now it’s taking about 1.5 hours.

CPU specs: amd 5700x3d

Handbrake settings: h264, all filters off, fps same as source/constant framerate, 19RF, slower encode, encoder tune none, encoder profile auto, encoder level auto.

Does anyone know why, when I encode a video with HandBrake, the final file doesn't contain any information about the bitrate ?

im no expert but im pretty sure the total bitrate is above zero

I have recorded a lot of self-vlogs in 4k60 with my Pocket 3 and I realize I do not need really to keep them at that resolution. I use handbrake to compress them in Mac using the VideoToolbox video encoder and 85% of the time, the converted file is smaller than the original. The only issue that I have is I have to keep my M1 Max on and do the conversion.

I have thought about delegating the conversion (handbrake via docker image) in my ugreen nas (4800plus) but the "best quality" using Intel QSV results to file larger than the original and felt the video looks worse vs the converted quality in Mac. Is there any specific setting that I should consider to at least match the Mac's output.

Help! I'm a relative novice here but I'm about to start digitizing my physical media collection and I'm running into a bit of a wall. Basically I just want to preserve the audio options from the disc in the files I make.

I see handbrake pushing me towards mixing everything down into AAC Stereo by default - in 2026 isn't that insane? I have a 5.1 setup and want to maximize that, and maybe some day I'll have a 7.1, but obviously I don't want to kneecap myself if I'm watching on my phone or wearing headphones or something that is truly stereo.

I'm also a bit lost on all the Dolby options.

Is there a braindead, flexible, future proof option I should choose or could bake into a preset?

Thanks!

Just curious, why would I keep/remove the default tweaks for H265 MKV 2160p60 4K preset:

>strong-intra-smoothing=0:rect=0:aq-mode=1:rd=4:psy-rd=0.75:psy-rdoq=4.0:rdoq-level=1:rskip=2

I realised that removing rskip=2 and/or rect=0 (please confirm?) more than doubles the encode speed on Slow preset.

I'm not sure what the other parameters do – could someone tell me, based on their experience or using or removing them? Thank you.

Hi, I have some long videos (roughly 1 hour each in length) that I wish to compress. What're the best video settings to use on the Handbrake software for this, please? The maximum quality I care in having is 1080p.

Can someone explain whether StaxRip can be better than HandBrake with identical settings, from preset to bitrate? Does anyone have experience using StaxRip?

Why does AV1 look blurry, and is there any way to fix it?

I installed Handbrake on my HexOS Server (based on TrueNAS Scale), I've noticed whenever I use the AV1 (SVT) encoder, the ram usage is way higher than it should be, even with 16gb allocated to it, the container is crashing due to low memory and it gets a SIGKILL signal and automatically restarts, making it impossible to render my library in AV1 (I would use QSV if it supported Dolby Vision).

Can anyone confirm, that Handbrake now fully supporting actual Radeon cards HW-decoders?

Official docs said, that it still doesn't, but maybe there is just too old info?

If Handbrake still can't work with Radeon HW-decoders, is there any video converter, that can use it, especially simultaneous work with HW-encoder?

Hi all,

I have a stack of computers I use to encode video files using handbrakeCLI. I call them drones. I have written a universal script for them, which works GREAT.

Yesterday, I decided that it would be nice to have a simple web page for monitoring the drones as they work their way through their queues. So, I built a very simple HTML file and PHP files to pull the log information from the running process using only the STDERR (i.e. 2> Output.txt) and that worked, but did not contain the information I wanted.

What I am looking for is the STDOUT info which contains the percentage of completion, some stats, and the ETA of completion.

The problem is that, apparently the STDOUT for handbrakeCLI doesn't use any kind of CR or /n or /r, so my PHP files (which are coded to pull only the last line of the txt file(s)) wind up pulling in like 3K lines of logging...which is NOT what I was expecting.

I have been at this for over 12 hours. I have run countless searches to try to find an answer to my dilemma, but have come up short.

The command being run by my parsing script is as follows:

HandBrakeCLI -i "$i" -o "$of" --preset-import-gui -Z "$SIXCHANTVE1080PS" --srt-file "$fn.srt" --srt-burn >> "$LOGFILE2" 2>&1

The PHP I am using for pull only the last line of $LOGFILE2 is as follows:

<?php
$file = '/Shares/FalcorSAN-XL/Status/VidEnc1-2.txt';
$escaped_file = escapeshellarg($file);

if (file_exists($file)) {
    $escaped_file = escapeshellarg($file);
$lastLine = `tail -n 1 $escaped_file`;
echo trim($lastLine);
} else {
    echo "Powered off - NOT READY";
}
?>

For all other notifications prior to and after the handbrakeCLI command (above), everything works wonderfully and very quickly.

I guess I just don't understand how to parse the STDOUT directly from handbrakeCLI in a way that results in a SINGLE line.

Yes, I want "Encoding: task 1 of 2, 34.25 % (73.24 fps, avg 75.31 fps, ETA 00h09m37s), but I do NOT want the 1200 lines prior to it.

Someone, please...put me out of my misery and point out the excruciatingly simple fix I haven't thought of, stumbled across, or am simply too tired/drained to figure out on my own...

I should point out that I am using a debian-based linux distro (Ubuntu), my drone script is written in bash, and the script works in every way EXCEPT this.

Hell, maybe it isn't even the handbrakeCLI command but the PHP script...

TIA

First time using handbrake because I just realized I’ll have to deinterlace so many photos and videos I’ve taken with my old digicams and digicamcorders. Will doing this through handbrake fuck up the date taken metadata, which I use to sort photos and videos I take?

Why can't I encode an MKV to match the same colours as the original source?

[Source]:

No extra bloom or contrast; colours are rich and standard HDR-looking.

[Encode 1 - Colorspace: Off]:

• H.265 10-bit (x265)
• RF 23.5
• Preset: Slow
• Tune: grain
• Color Range: Same As Source
• Colorspace: Off
• Additional Options: strong-intra-smoothing=0:rect=0:aq-mode=1:rd=4:psy-rd=0.75:psy-rdoq=4.0:rdoq-level=1:rskip=2

Results: contrast seems too high with added bloom effect.

[Encode 2 - Colorspace: BT.2020]:

• H.265 10-bit (x265)
• RF 23.5
• Preset: Slow
• Tune: grain
• Color Range: Same As Source
• Colorspace: BT.2020
• Additional Options: strong-intra-smoothing=0:rect=0:aq-mode=1:rd=4:psy-rd=0.75:psy-rdoq=4.0:rdoq-level=1:rskip=2

Results: Colours look faded/washed out

Hello all. I'm going quietly insane. I'm using Handbrake for the first time. All I want to do is transform a 1440 x 1080i (interlaced) video clip (captured via FireWire from HD video tape) into standard 1920 x 1080p (progressive). No matter what I do it keeps reverting to 1440 x 1080. Ideally I want to be able to save it as a preset as I have many more clips to deinterlace for a project. I have been using Topaz AI (Dione) which is great but takes forever. Can someone please help? I've exhausted Google and ChatGPT on the subject - all to no avail. Thanks.

Basic guide to transcoding 4K movies to fit on a 50GB Blu-ray (maximum possible quality)

After a lot of trial and error, here’s a simple method to convert 4K remux files into BD50 discs while maintaining very high quality (well above streaming)

and ensuring compatibility with standalone players.

Goal

• Keep quality as close as possible to the original remux
• Avoid stuttering / buffer issues on Blu-ray players
• Use a simple, repeatable setup without overcomplicating things

Technical setup

I use FFmpeg + NVENC (HEVC 10-bit):

ffmpeg -y -i “4Kmovie.mkv” 
-map 0:v:0 -map 0:a -map 0:s? 
-c:v hevc_nvenc -profile:v main10 -pix_fmt p010le 
-rc vbr_hq -b:v XXM -maxrate XXM -bufsize XXM 
-spatial_aq 1 -temporal_aq 1 -aq-strength 3 
-c:a copy -c:s copy 
“outputConvertedMovie.mkv”

In this line, you replace the XX values depending on your needs:

-b:v XXM -maxrate XXM -bufsize XXM

• -b:v → target bitrate (the average bitrate you want the video to aim for)
• -maxrate → maximum bitrate allowed for complex scenes (peaks)
• -bufsize → buffer size

The buffer is especially important for Blu-ray players. If it’s too high, you will get microstutter or playback hiccups even if the file is correctly encoded, so it’s best to keep it aligned with maxrate.

This is also the reason why a simple 2-pass encode targeting file size is NOT suitable for this use case. While 2-pass is great for maximizing efficiency and hitting a specific file size, it does not properly constrain instantaneous bitrate peaks or buffer behavior in a way that is compatible with standalone Blu-ray players.

Main rule (bitrate)

I use a simple system based on movie length:

Short movies (< 2h15)
👉 45 / 50 / 50
Maximum quality within BD50

Medium-length movies (2h15 – 2h45)
👉 40 / 45 / 45
Very good balance between quality and size

Long movies (> 2h45)
👉 35 / 40 / 40
To make them fit within BD50 without killing quality

IMPORTANT

Length is not everything. The type of movie matters.

Don’t lower the bitrate too much if the movie has:

• heavy film grain (Nolan, analog film, IMAX, etc.)
• dark scenes with noise
• fire, smoke, rain
• chaotic or fast-paced action

In those cases, try to keep -b:v at ≥ 40 Mb/s if possible.

You can lower the bitrate more if the movie has:

• clean digital image
• sci-fi with smooth backgrounds
• low texture complexity

With this method you can convert a 4K remux into a BD50-compatible size, keep very high visual quality, and avoid playback issues on real hardware. It’s not a remux, but in many cases the difference is barely noticeable.

Blu-ray is still one of the best formats for long-term storage. In particular, Verbatim MABL 50GB discs (HTL) offer good long-term stability, are more resistant to degradation than older organic discs, and have an estimated lifespan of 30–70 years or more depending on storage conditions.

I can use selection behavior each session without any issue. I set it the same way every time. Is there a way set make that the default for every session without hitting the button and setting it every time? thanks

Hi I have handbrake for Linux and it was working perfectly fine and now it has stopped working at all like it will not make a file at all it will fully encode the film and then fail can someone please tell me what the hell I need to do to fix this use the flatpack version on KUbuntu