Is Handbrake better for Blu-ray encoding than Edius?

[Ron Evans]

What filters do you need Ron? Just curious.. My output file needs no filters, it's complete after the edit .

The plug in does not have the resize filter so there are black bars on the resize as the most important and for a little more cost the full version has a full complement of filters if needed and a lot more control. I too use none of these filters other than the resize filter. Export a HQX HD file and then get a nice clean encode resize to DVD with no black bars.

Ron Evans

[GrassValley_SL]

Yes but this is about Bluray so what role does the resize filter have?

[Ron Evans]

Yes but this is about Bluray so what role does the resize filter have?

No none I was always thinking about the plug in for downscaling for DVD from timeline so missed that point !!!! For my Bluray's that are always long 2 hours or more I just use Quicksync. Good enough for my purposes. For the long, high contrast theatre scenes I could not see a big enough difference to warrant all the extra time for a x264 encode. Since I already have T4 and T5 I saw no need for the plug in since it missed out the very thing I wanted.

Ron Evans

[GrassValley_SL]

Understood. :)

[Claire]

Claire, I am not speaking for Ron, but in my experience T5 imparts a bit of a color shift when encoding. When I encode the same clip in Edius and T5, the T5 encode has a shift towards magenta. I use the filters to adjust the color. Also maybe to tweak sharpness a bit as well.

I would want to encode in Edius all the time but progressive footage and DVD do not mix. (always need to do both).

Bassman, just HD from T5 or is it HD downscaled to SD?

Speaking for the AVC Movie Plug-in, toggling quickly between the original and back, Edius vectorscope does show a very slight drop in chroma amplitude. However since the same slight drop is still there if I use MeGui and because I can't see any difference out to a big screen.. I don't worry about that.

If it's HD encodes from T5 you have that magenta colour shift with then you may like to test out the trial version of the AVC plug-in. It has presets for progressive and interlaced.

It is nice to encode straight from Edius whenever possible, certainly speeds up productivity.

[Bassman]

I see the same color shift for DVD or BD encoding in T5. Workflow is Edius-HQX 10bit-T5

I usually shoot in progressive, so the plugin is a no-go for making DVDs inside Edius.

[Liverpool TV]

Hi Tim.

Out if interest, do you see the same shift when using an 8 bit source, or YUY2. It could be that T5 isn't using the proper decode filter for the colour space.

To anyone seeing any issues on playback that look like gamma shifts. This could simply be down to the filter used to decode the h264 video. If you play your encodes in WMP, QT, and VLC, you will probably see three different pictures.

Cheers,
Dave.

[John Hooper]

Just to return to original question....if I didn't want to spend money on a third party encoder, is Handbrake better than using Edius for Blu-ray?

I appreciate the suggestions about workflow, but since I am not editing as a business, time for the process is not that important.

If there is not a marked improvement in the end result, I might as well stick to using Edius for my Blu-ray discs.

[Liverpool TV]

John.

As I said earlier, HB won't do it.

Cheers,
Dave.

[John Hooper]

Sorry Dave, I missed it early on!

[Liverpool TV]

John.

If you want the absolute best of any h264 encoding, including Blu-ray. Then X264 is going to give you that, with MeGui being about the easiest way. If you use MeGui, use the AviSynth script creator.

But this does come at a trade off, with the process being very time consuming. Although this may not be an issue for you, as you said earlier, time is not a factor.

Many people will argue that the picture quality difference isn't worth the effort, but that is up to the individual. If you use 35Mb from Edius and 35 from X264, the differences will be less, but they are still there. But as it is pure quality you are concerned with, there is only really one way.

If you check back over my old tuturial posts as Red Union Films and David Harry, you will find in depth guides on the best way to do it from your Edius edits.

Cheers,
Dave.

[Bassman]

Hi Tim.

Out if interest, do you see the same shift when using an 8 bit source, or YUY2. It could be that T5 isn't using the proper decode filter for the colour space.

To anyone seeing any issues on playback that look like gamma shifts. This could simply be down to the filter used to decode the h264 video. If you play your encodes in WMP, QT, and VLC, you will probably see three different pictures.

Cheers,
Dave.

Dave,

I am away right now but I will try an 8bit vs 10bit test, HQX vs HQ test when I get the chance.