Handbreak - Is 2 pass encoding worth it?

[turtle]

I've always ripped in 2 pass encoding for my DVDs and I'm just wondering if it's worth it to do so. I don't really mind the time it takes, but if it doesn't make much difference then why am I doing it? My normal settings for converting a DVD are:
2-Pass, Average Bit Rate of 2500, Large file size, 5G iPod support, Chapter markers and largest video setting with anamorphic set to strict.

I like DVD quality and don't mind the files being larger since I'm watching them through my tv on an HD TV. The higher the quality the better. Thanks. :)

[chucker]

This is a highly subjective matter… you're probably best off testing it yourself. Randomly pick a few movies and encode them both ways, then compare.

That said… if you "don't really mind the time it takes", then nothing speaks against it. It will lead to higher quality; whether you can actually discern the difference is the difficult question to answer.

[torifile]

I can notice a pretty significant difference using 2 pass encoding. I do it for all of my movies. TV shows, I usually let slide with 1 pass. BTW, I'm doing it for exactly the same reason as you.

[SKMDC]

I use the TV preset now, I toyed around with doing it differently, but for ease of use the preset works just fine for me.
One thing I noticed is the preset will record two separate audio tracks but as far as I can tell TV can only play one, I did one the other day and my iMac played the director's commentary version* and TV played the regular version....odd.





*by the way it was Step Brothers, where they SING the commentary complete with organ accompaniment! it's pretty funny, they also have NBA LA Kings guard Baron Davis do some commentary in spite of the fact he had nothing to do with the film, although he said he had seen it.

[torifile]

I use the TV preset now, I toyed around with doing it differently, but for ease of use the preset works just fine for me.
One thing I noticed is the preset will record two separate audio tracks but as far as I can tell TV can only play one, I did one the other day and my iMac played the director's commentary version* and TV played the regular version....odd.





*by the way it was Step Brothers, where they SING the commentary complete with organ accompaniment! it's pretty funny, they also have NBA LA Kings guard Baron Davis do some commentary in spite of the fact he had nothing to do with the film, although he said he had seen it.
I click the preset and then just check the 2 pass box. Ease of preset with that extra little bit of quality

[turtle]

I click the preset and then just check the 2 pass box. Ease of preset with that extra little bit of quality

That's what I do as well though I also click iPod 5G Support.

I never knew this until I did it by accident, if you hold down the play button when there are chapter markers it'll allow you to skip to a chapter. Pretty cool actually.

[remlemasi]

What about the turbo first-pass option under the two-pass? I use it when I need it fast. It only takes an extra 15 minutes or so on a Core 2 Duo 2.4.

[turtle]

I've never tried the turbo pass. Maybe I could just to see how it works for me.

Here's an interesting one though: I have a movie that I've converted 7 times now with the same settings but once it's added to iTunes I get a message that it can't sync with tv. I look and it's bitrate is about 3600 even though I have it set to 2500. Now matter what I did it wouldn't create an tv friendly conversion. I do happen to have Popcorn so I ended up letting it convert it and it finally was able to be synced with tv. Anyone else run into this with a movie?