I am using Handbreak to rip movies from Blu-Ray or DVD discs, it seems to have trouble scanning one of my Blu-Ray discs, unless it takes that long to scan (Idk how long it takes, probably a while if Optical speeds are that slow). Is there anything else I need to know about the program, such as the benefits between H.264 and H.265.
Are you ripping it first or directly from the disc? h.265 compresses it better than h.264 so you get the same quality at a smaller size. Or you get the same size with better quality. Converting to h265 will also take far longer. h264 takes less time say a 40minute h264 depending on your setup you might take upwards of an hour and a half to two hours.
Personally I prefer ripping with MakeMKV, then you can run the .mkv files through Handbrake if you want.
That could be a lot faster than ripping with Handbrake itself.
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I agree.
Yes, definitely MakeMKV first.
One of the big things is that with MakeMKV, you're basically limited by the disc read speed / hard drive write speed in creating the mkv file as MakeMKV essentially just vomits the whole bluray or DVD movie on to the hard drive without any encoding.
It of course takes up more space but takes heck of a less time. After that you can queue up your .mkv files and have multiple movies waiting up in queue instead of having to do them all one by one swapping discs each time.
Regarding x265 vs x264, if you have the horsepower and patience, go with x265.
It takes more performance to encode and to decode (eg play it) but the space saving is quite nice.
x265 isn't quite up there yet with x264 in regards to quality so if you want to store your movies so that the quality is "transparent" (fancy way to say encode looks exactly like source) then go with x264.
What presets to use? Pick the speed preset according to how much time you're willing to spend.
With x265 medium is probably the setting to go for "good decisions" by the encoder and doesn't take a life time, if it's too slow then feel free to bump it up.
And use CRF instead of bitrate. CRF stands for Constant Rate Factor and basically means Constant Quality.
What CRF level to use? You're gonna have to test that out.
Instead of doing a full movie encode and seeing what it looks like after the long ass encode, split the file to say a couple of 1 minute sections and encode those at different CRF settings to see what is good to your eyes.
How to split mkv's? You can use MKVToolNix for example
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
It's a simple yet quite powerful program and easy to use. Just fire it up, give it an input file and go to the output to set the splitting how you want it.
For example I would approach it like this: look at your movie and see where there's a fast paced scene for example and a slow paced scene after that.
That scene could start at 41 minutes in to the film for example.
You'd select the source file, go to the output tab, select Split mode: after output duration 41 minutes and set max number of files to 2. Start muxing and mkvtoolnix will output two files to the same folder as the original file resides in.
One of the output files will be from the beginning till 41 minutes and the second one the rest of it.
You can then get rid of the first file mkvtoolnix outputted and then select the second file as source, this time splitting it after say 3 minutes if that's how long the action scene lasts and the slower scene begins.
Start muxing again and you'll have two files, a 3 minute test clip and the excess which you'll delete now.
A bit longwinded and there might be an easier way to do this but this is how I've done it.
Now you can go ahead and do some test encodes to see what works best for you.
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Yeah, will probably try MakeMKV, looks a bit easier and Handbrake isn't reading my disc even after all the time it had.
MakeMKV is officially still in beta (but no worries, I haven't had a single issue in the years that I've been using it).
Every couple of months the beta key will expire and they'll post a new one on > this page <
You can already buy MakeMKV as well, in which case you'll get a permanent key.
Of course today the old key has just expired and they haven't posted the new one yet. Just my luck.
Oh well, you've got a 30 day trial without needing a key anyway, so you'll be fine.