Comments on: Android HTC Hero/Eris x264 (h.264) video encoding with HandBrake

By: balu

balu — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:51:45 +0000

Thanks for this writing, it was an awesome help!
In Handbrake 0.9.5 you also need to uncheck the "weighted P-frame" box to play it properly with hardware acceleration.

By: Mike Kingscott

Mike Kingscott — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:22:43 +0000

Hey, just saying thanks for this post, works like a charm on Handbrake 0.9.5

By: James

James — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:49:15 +0000

Outstanding! Profile saved and working with a Mac OS 10.6 x64 version of Handbrake 0.9.4.

I've had an HTC G2 Touch (A Hero very lightly rebranded, Android 2.1) but have been dragging around an old Touch for viewing videos on longer journeys. Now my girlfriend has discovered Angry Birds, I don't have the Touch much any more. Time to fill the SD with some nerdy videos (in my case Time Team — I don't seem to be able to get enough of that show)!

By: streaming

streaming — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:45:29 +0000

You made several nice points there. I did a search on the theme and found mainly people will agree with your blog.

By: HTC Wallpapers

HTC Wallpapers — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:22:28 +0000

Thank you! =)

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:32:07 +0000

Nice tips Scott, I was not aware Handbrake had compression settings built into it.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:44:55 +0000

The volume in handbrake is controlled with the “DRC” slider in Handbrake under “Audio”. In the script, it’s the “-D 1″ setting, and it can be a value from 1-4.

DVDs are set with the sound pretty quiet, so that when an explosion or something happens, it can be QUITE loud. That “Dynamic Range” is pretty wide, and DRC=Dynamic Range Compression.

For a DVD source, I usually work with a value of 2.5 to raise the volume up a bit. If it’s an existing file that I’m transcoding via Handbrake, the volume is usually OK and I leave it at 1.

BTW: instead of an average bitrate, I’ve usually be using a constant quality setting of about 59%.This gives you a varying file size, but it efficiently max a small file for letterbox movies and a larger file for full-screen.

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:28:27 +0000

Hey Logic,

I almost got an Evo, but then decided to wait until the next Sprint phone comes out around Oct. There's 2 changes you'll want to make for the Evo and any other new phones. The Evo's resolution is higher than the Hero (800×480 – WVGA), so you can adjust the size of your video accordingly. The second is the phone runs faster, so you can increase the bitrate, which effects quality and the phone won't lag. The only side effect of increasing quality is of course the filesize of the video will increase as well.

So in conclusion…
-Set the width of your video to the max width of the phone (800px for the Evo)
-Increase the quality (bitrate) to take advantage of the phone's faster hardware (but loose to SD card space)

By: logicc87

logicc87 — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:22:25 +0000

Thank you for your reply, will you be posting a tutorial similar to this one for the Evo? i would like to know how to covert a HD video to try to watch it on the evo since its hd capable.

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:55:46 +0000

Hi Logicc87,
The volume of the audio isn't connected to the bitrate. The bitrate will influence the overall size of an audio file, and quality of the sound. If you want to adjust the volume you'll need an application that can manipulate video. Applications like After Effects, or Final Cut will be able to do this, but are overkill.

I don't know of a good program that can do this for video, but ideally it would be something with a queue for videos and compressor to change the amplitude of the audio. This would allow you to run a handful of videos through the application and all would end up with similar audio levels…If I find an application that can do what I'm describing, I'll post a link.

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:32:37 +0000

Hi Bjbilbo,
I have not experienced this before, but the only potential issue I can think of is the source video isn't being interpreted correctly by Handbrake, or the source file is too small. Try various other files and codecs and see if you can isolate the issue.

By: logicc87

logicc87 — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:12:14 +0000

Sam, me again lol, quick question, how would you increase the volume quality on a video by higher bitrate or just my messing around with the audio settings?

By: bjbilbo

bjbilbo — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:00:33 +0000

i have an issue with getting my videos in 480 size the biggest it will let me adjust is 320 also gray pass encoding and 2 pass encoding it wont allow me to check and all my videos come out slow and squarely pixaletd im using handbrake 4.9 i believe

By: logicc87

logicc87 — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:15:21 +0000

Thank you.

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 06:16:51 +0000

The bitrate directly effects the quality of your video. The higher the bitrate value, the less the video will be compressed (resulting in higher quality video, but larger filesize). For example, the Blueray format maxes out at around 40,000kbps, which is responsible for it's amazing quality, but huge filesize. In comparison, a typical low quality video you'll find on YouTube may be around 400kbps.

By: logicc87

logicc87 — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:01:07 +0000

ok thank you, one silly question, how will it benefit me to increase the bitrate? meaning what good does it do to the video?

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:27:59 +0000

I don't have an Evo to test with although I might soon. The width of the video should be 640px wide, so the full resolution of the screen is used. As for the height, it should be adjusted proportionality. An HD frame scaled down to 640px wide will have a height of 360px, so I would use that as a starting point. In addition, the Evo has a more powerful CPU than the Hero or Eris and you could probably turn up the Average Bitrate from 384 to higher number (assuming you're not concerned with file sizes getting larger).

By: logicc87

logicc87 — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:48:49 +0000

Hi sam, do you happened to have these setting but for the EVO? i tried movies i encoded with for the Hero on the EVO and they worked fine, but i would like to know that correct setting for the pixels for the evo… 640 x 480? im not sure, If you know i would appreciated it.

By: Sam Morris

Sam Morris — Sat, 29 May 2010 20:44:32 +0000

Thanks for the comment Erik, glad to hear the settings worked for you.

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:39:56 +0000

Thanks for all the info. I have an Eris and those settings work perfect. The only two things I changed were to keep the frame rate same as source and use mixed references.