Anyone using Handbrake?

[nonamer]

Luckily I bought tons of storage when the prices were still at an acceptable level but still a lot of files with huge sizes in my archive bothers me.

For me 1080p is the sweet spot. 4K is unnecessary, 720p is too low. So mostly trying to convert the 4K videos to 1080p without losing too much quality.

I started with a couple of videos and results are impressive. Takes around 2 minutes for a 7 GB file, shrinks it down to around 1 GB.

Just wanted to ask if you guys are using another freeware/software or any settings on Handbrake you recommend? It seems pretty straightforward but I wouldn't love to realize that I'm making some huge mistakes after processing a lot of videos and deleting the original files.

Edit: I have a high end system but I'm not using it for this. The PC I'm using has 12700 CPU, 9070 XT GPU, 32 GB DDR 4 Ram.

I don't care about the quality if the difference is not too much so I've selected Hardware preset H265 VCN 1080p for faster processing. Most the other settings I didn't touch but I made sure that all the filters are off, changed video encoder to H265 10 bit(AMD VCE). Constant Quality(CQ) 25 and Audio Bitrate is 192.

[nyllover]

I used it once in the past, then I stopped when I realized it is more or less just a "wrapper" for ffmpeg.
What I usually do, when I want to compress a video, is to ask ChatGPT to write e the command for FFMpeg (it's free to download, you use it from command line).
I'm not sure how much of a "geek" you are, but this way you could easily ask ChatGPT (or any other AI) to write you a simple script that would automatically convert all videos inside a specific folder, saving you tons of time.

[nonamer]

I used it once in the past, then I stopped when I realized it is more or less just a "wrapper" for ffmpeg.
What I usually do, when I want to compress a video, is to ask ChatGPT to write e the command for FFMpeg (it's free to download, you use it from command line).
I'm not sure how much of a "geek" you are, but this way you could easily ask ChatGPT (or any other AI) to write you a simple script that would automatically convert all videos inside a specific folder, saving you tons of time.

Thanks.

I'm quite the "geek" in fact, just not spending time as much as my younger days.

I would love to work on my files one by one instead of a folder, I guess most of them don't need shrinking. At least not until the point that the hardware prices continue to hold/rise and my storage runs out.

One question, if Handbrake does similar job, isn't it better to have an interface? Is it making the process slower or such, what's the disadvantage of using it?

[nyllover]

In my opinion, it just adds a useless "layer". These days, with any LLM, you can easily write a script that does exactly what you want on any given file, so I just don't see the need of installing another software. But that's just a personal choice

[pumplover]

Just to interject, I've used Handbrake on and off for years, but I use command prompt driven applications for things too. i use FFMPEG a lot in conjunction with yt-dlp and something like getting assistance from an LLM makes it easy to use. If you're doing something in bulk, FFMPEG with some explicit prompt assistance would probably be a more direct and faster method with less overhead on your PC, but handbrake is great for a one off on things. I like to bake subtitles into videos and it's just easier for me in that situation. don't know if that helped any. but like nyllover said, it's ultimately a personal choice