After a certain point, going lower in bitrate while maintaining the same resolution will result in worse quality than just dropping the resolution. e.g. 480p @ 4Mbps might look better than 720p @ 4Mbps. With something as grainy as Star Wars, I’d recommend sticking to 480p resolution if you have to use a DVD-5. On DVD-9 720p should still be reasonable, you may just need to play with the bitrate a bit to get it to fit. All of this is a bit moot when using Handbrake though, which can produce some pretty terrible looking encodes. I recommend MeGUI if you need a “wizard” to help you through it.
I use Linux, so MeGUI isn’t an option. X264’s commannd line options are pretty straight forward, but I’ve never had a problem with Handbrake before so I haven’t learned them. As for size, when I did a CRF 20 encode I got a 5.5 GB file that looked great at 720p. It was only when I found that the lousy FAT32 file system used by USB sticks won’t hold the file that I started looking at making an AVCHD disc. Maybe I could try making an AVCHD structure on USB, though I’m not sure how many players can handle such a beast. As for 480p, I didn’t think that was legal for AVCHD.
On the topic of cropping vs. not cropping, it all comes down to how many encodes TN-1 are willing to produce. I don’t know the logistics behind their setup, but you’ve gotta keep in mind that there is more than one project to be worked on and that each additional encode adds a lot of render time. In a perfect world, I think TN-1 should offer two options:
- Full BD-50 format 1080p encode with any audio tracks planned.
- BD-25 sized 1080p MKV, cropped, with any audio tracks planned.
- Chotab’s Dream Sequence: 2160p, x264 encoded @ ~85-100 Mbps, cropped.
Ignore 3, I was just daydreaming a bit. 😉 Anyway, between options 1 and 2 you have a lot of your bases covered. You’ve got the disc crowd and the encode crowd happy, at least the 1080p users. The only people not covered are those that want 1080p at lower bitrate which they can transcode themselves from either 1080p release or lower resolution which works the same way. I personally think it’d be a waste of time for the team to make AVCHD format releases, 720p, etc. because if we have to pick and choose I would prefer only the highest quality offerings that the other formats can be created from at our leisure.
Indeed, I don’t think that TN1 needs to do all the subencodes. They just need to provide a good file that can be used as a source for other people. That’s why the “no 50 GB version” stance is so disappointing.