Best handbrake setting?

Its subjective, I use their preset because its more than acceptable when considering file size and "looks" when playing.
ipod video bit rate 1500
ATV 2500 even Hi-Def

sound rate is up to user.

Try a few short encode at different bit rates and decide.

Honestly my process is this, and I have well over 500GB of contect of both movies and tv shows, so.....

1. I use the AppleTV preset and bump up the audio to 2.0 only because the process usually quiets the audio during conversion.
2. If the movie is one that I love and will enjoy the surround sound and high quality I leave it in that format and add it to iTunes, other wise I use VisualHub and set the file to re-process the video to "standard" quality and it lowers the file size to a forth of the original size and honestly the video quality is the same but the audio goes from dolby surround to stereo. Then I add it to iTunes

I use 2500 as the bitrate, 2 pass encoding (no/no turbo 1st pass) and Aspect Ratio On. This results in a 90 minute movie taking a little over 2GB of space. I am not that concerned with size and would rather have quality. 2 pass encoding does take a bit more time but I just pop it in and go do other things. on my iMac a 90 minute movie will take about 2 hours to encode with 2 passes. I have been very impressed with the quality of my conversions. I have not tried converting any HD material however.

oops. I meant to write that I use 3000 as the bitrate- except for a movie that is more than 2 1/2 hours- then you will run into the 4 GB limit for the ATV so I bump down to 2500.

in my mind it's silly to encode anything in a higher setting then the source
as if it's lower the atv will upscale and if the atv dident the tv would both cases would likely do as well a job as handbrake and mean a smaller video file size

Rudegar,

Can you explain more? I am admittedly very new to this- just got my ATV after Jobs announced rentals and then happened upon the idea after reading here to move some owned material to my ATV.

Specifically, you say that it's silly to encode anything in a higher setting than the source- ok makes sense, but doesn't DVD have a 11 mbps transfer rate? So how is encoding at 3 mpbs higher than the source? Because of the compression?

I couldn't agree more. It's a waste of time to encode at a better rate than the source material. You are just faking the funk.

k-man55 wrote:
then you will run into the 4 GB limit for the ATV so I bump down to 2500.

Just an FYI - I believe there is not longer a 4GB limit - I have a file thats 5GB and it plays fine (streamed - have not tried to sync it).