I too am a big believer in doing some amount of testing when the opportunity comes along. Most recently I had to crunch down some video to smaller file sizes. I decided to use Handbrake as that’s the hammer I use for every nail. And in the time since I first started using it, a number of options have cropped up all surrounding the use of the open source x264 encoding libraries. There are now more commandline tweaks and options than you could ever imagine. Thankfully the maintainers for Handbrake have simplified some of the setting through the GUI based version of the software. Now I wasn’t going for quality but for file size and I got it using the “constant quality” output option as opposed to my classical fave “Constant Bitrate”. Let’s just say after a few hours of doing different tweaks on the same file I got bit rates way down without using Contant Bit Rate. And it seams to work no matter what the content is (static shots or fast moving action). So kudos to Spreadys for giving a head-to-head comparison. Much appreciated.
After another long phone call, I decided to repeat a test previously conducted 3 years ago.
The conversation surrounded a small experiment on transcoders and players. It highlighted an issue in that any documented process must include what software was used, the settings and then a comparison of the results. It originally proved that just specifying a player type and / or container format was useless, as the video file itself could have been created in a million different ways. I was asked, “would the same issues happen today?” With updated software and higher spec PC’s, would issues still arise. I said Yes… but then thought I had better check!
Disclaimer!! – This is by no means scientific. I have replicated the real world and not dug too deep into encoding parameters or software settings and the PC used is mid ranged. I have posted this information in order to…
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