Video transcoding presets for Handbrake


hmc

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Hi guys,


in the last couple of days I tried to figure out the best way to transcode video content to be played back on the Pandora using PanPlayer (MPlayer).


I came up with three presets for the "Handbrake" transcoding tool, which gives you:


1. LQ: low quality with 300kbps and 400px horizontal resolution (vertical res. according to aspect ratio of content): ok for informational content, but artefacts are well visible and due to only quarter resolution, the image is a little blurry. But it gives small files and low CPU load.


2. MQ: medium quality with 500kbps and 400px horizontal resolution (vertical res. according to aspect ratio of content): this is quite good for all kinds of contents, I use it for movies. Still a little blurry and a few artefacts, but a good compromise


3. HQ: high quality with 900kbps and full Pandora resolution (800px horizontal). Very good video quality.


Audio is always encoded as MP3 stereo with 128kbps.


All presets use MPEG-4 for video. I tested with H.264, too, but decoding H.264 with otherwise identical encoder settings needs much more CPU power on the Pandora and does not see to add a lot of quality, so I chose MPEG-4.


On my Pandora, with Conky measuring CPU load, decoding an MQ movie needs about 30..40% of CPU and HQ needs around 90% of the CPU. In some cases, e.g. if other processes cause more CPU load, choosing a higher CPU frequency may be necessary to avoid stuttering on HQ, but usually it should work just out of the box.


Hints for optimization are welcome of course.


Have fun!


Daniel


Handbrake_Presets_for_PanPlayer.zip


P.S.: The attached files are exported presets of Handbrake. You can use them for Handbrake by importing them. On Mac OS X, use Handbrake's menu "Presets" and menu item "Import". Don't know if it's the same on other platforms.


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EDIT: Member "Antarctica" wrote about a similar topic using mencoder:
 

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  • Handbrake_Presets_for_PanPlayer.zip
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I didn't try VLC, since my experience is on the Mac that VLC generally needs more performance than MPlayer, so I assumed that it's the same on Pandora.


What do you mean with "other formats"? Other codecs? I just tried MPEG-4 and H.264.


Daniel
 
What format does ths put the encoding in? and does it work with VLC? That is the player I currently have installed on my Pandy.


I have a bunch of movies on DVD, and others in the disk on my DirectV player which a friend said he'd show me how to drop those to a disk...


I'd like to grab me a few movies and put them all on separate SD cards, so that I can fool around. Basically, my unit is set up so that the main card is essential software, and the appdata that goes with it. The second card is exclusively media.


So I can swap out the second card to whichever SD card happens to have the wanted media at the time.


I'd love to be able, for example, to put all six Star Wars movies on a single SD card, that would be awesome...a six-movie, about 14 hour Star Wars marathon...can you say geek party?? :)
 
^ Appart from everything else, I have all episodes of Voyager, Enterprise, and Deep Space 9 ready to go on my 1Tb drive. ;)


EDIT: Though this isn't so much a geek party as a lone prolonged indulgience of social estrangement.


wash. rinse. repeat.
 
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The encoding done using these presets are optimized for PanPlayer (mplayer) on a classic Pandora with 600 MHz.


VLC should also be able to play back those files, btu I haven't tested that.
 
I would absolutely love if anybody could do the same thing for good old mencoder (or anything else that runs on linux boxen). I've tried stuff meself, but I never seem to get the options quite right. And there are a lot of them...
 
I would absolutely love if anybody could do the same thing for good old mencoder (or anything else that runs on linux boxen). I've tried stuff meself, but I never seem to get the options quite right. And there are a lot of them...

I recommend checking out h264enc or xvidenc which are frontend scripts to mencoder.
 
Excellent!


Video transcoding really is a dark art, though.
 
Hi guys,

attachicon.gif
Handbrake_Presets_for_PanPlayer.zip


P.S.: The attached files are exported presets of Handbrake. You can use them for Handbrake by importing them. On Mac OS X, use Handbrake's menu "Presets" and menu item "Import". Don't know if it's the same on other platforms.
I downloaded this, and tried importing it, but apparantly it's from an earlier version, and won't work on the latest (0.10.1.6962 64-bit version) release. Is there a fix for this?
 
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Sorry to necro an old (very old) thread. But I came across this, and found the pre-sets didnt work any more, so i've updated them, and now they work with the current version of handbrake :) (attached) just in case anyone wants them...
 

Attachments

  • Handbrake_Presets_for_Pandora.zip
    3.1 KB · Views: 202
I've been using Universal Media Server to transcode and stream HD videos to the Pandora via ptitseb's Kodi PND with real good Success on my Rebirth Pandora. I will share profiles for that when I get home.
 
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