#OPTIMAL SETTINGS FOR HANDBRAKE HOW TO#
#OPTIMAL SETTINGS FOR HANDBRAKE MOVIE#

Some programs are in 1:78 (16:9), some are anamorphic with “non square pixels and a 1.33 aspect ratio stretched to 1.78, etc… I like to make sure everything is just square and physically as it should appear, thus I set “anamorphic” to “none,” and then choose modulus 2.

I like to keep my files at their original size, but aspect ratios can wreak havoc on media files. Just view your file in a media program like VLC to see where you want your in and out points to be, and then when you set them in Handbrake it will encode only the part of the file you want. If you switch the “chapters” dropdown to “seconds,” you can set the beginning and end points in minutes and seconds. One thing I learned recently is that you can actually trim your video file as you are encoding in Handbrake (so you aren’t encoding/keeping any footage that was recorded before/after your program). Here are the settings I use when I do this.

#OPTIMAL SETTINGS FOR HANDBRAKE MOVIE#

My files are usually around 550MB for a half hour tv show at 720p, and a normal DVD movie ends up being around 800MB to a gig (which is decent, considering a “normal” DVD is around 4 or 5GB).

#OPTIMAL SETTINGS FOR HANDBRAKE HOW TO#

I tend to just keep the file at native resolution (though I always convert to square pixels so devices aren’t confused about how to display the file –the “stretching” or “squishing” you often see when your device is trying to figure out how to interpret a file and display the correct aspect ratio). Since storage has become so cheap, I don’t worry too much about shrinking the size of media, especially if I’m ripping DVD’s (which are already SD instead of HD… which means fewer pixels and less space). It’s also the format that Plex streams natively to Roku for the best (fastest and glitch free) streaming experience. When I record television or rip the DVD’s I own, I like to convert the files to h.264, as it is a very efficient format for the quality of what you see (file size to picture quality ratio). There are a lot of opinions, and it’s not that anyone is necessarily wrong, but there are just a lot of different things that will work depending on your needs. There is a LOT of confusion “out there” concerning the best settings for converting your media files with Handbrake.

Optimal settings for handbrake