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iTunes vs. Handbrake - A comparison

justinpurnell.com — A frame vs. frame comparison of movie image quality for an iTunes download vs. Handbrake H.264 rip.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 13, 2006

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  • geminitojanus, on 10/30/2007, -4/+89See you in Court.

    --RIAA/MPAA.
  • Shatneresque, on 10/12/2007, -0/+41Note that the encodes that come from the iTunes Store are using the H.264 "low complexity" profile (use the Get Info window in iTunes to confirm). Handbrake is using the much higher quality main profile.

    No doubt the reason the iTunes Store encodes are done with the low complexity profile is so that they can be played back on an iPod without killing the battery.
  • wolfzero, on 10/12/2007, -3/+38"You wanna know who really killed JFK?" The RIAA. He was listening to some bootleg 8-track tapes in that limo...
  • MrBlack08, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29http://www.duggmirror.com/apple/iTunes_vs_Handbrake_A_comparison/
  • lumbergh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Just FYI- if you just link to http://www.duggmirror.com/, it should pull the rest of the URL from the referer (very clever, btw). So you don't really have to include it unless you are giving the link to someone else ;)
  • corsairstw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19h.264 is contained in MP4, so it might have been H.264.
  • samster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Digg. Kills. WordPress. Everytime!
  • alexdagrate, on 10/12/2007, -9/+24Kind of reminds me of how the iTunes purchased 128 kps AAC files sound like crap compared to a CD ripped into 128 kps AAC (even using iTunes as the ripper!).

    Seriously, can Apple or the studio or the record companies not afford Handbrake? The lower quality would be OK if the files were smaller.

    larger file size + poorer quality + DRM + long download time = not worth the $10- $15 per movie.
  • Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15+1 for the first comment in this thread that makes sense. That seems quite plausible to me.
  • Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19Eh, whatever helps you dismiss the criticism.

    http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=242336024&size=l

    Look at the building mid-left and try and tell me that Handbrake magically invented all those windows through use of the sharpen filter. Filters cannot add information to an image.
  • inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -16/+30Torrents > ITMS
  • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16"Kind of reminds me of how the iTunes purchased 128 kps AAC files sound like crap compared to a CD ripped into 128 kps AAC (even using iTunes as the ripper!)."

    FYI: Apple doesn't encode the AAC files on the iTunes store. The record companies/artists/etc encode them and upload them to apple's server. There is a whole other iTunes Store program for record companies. So if they sound like crap, it's not apple.
  • bloqmon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Swing and a miss jo42. ;]
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17Price of Usenet < Torrents

    Most people have to pay $5.99 - $29.99 to download crap from usenet.
  • fleetskeet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Summary: Handbrake produces higher quality, smaller file size (2/3) video rips than the same videos purchased from iTunes.
  • ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Because the second window is highlighted, it's title is bold and looks different?
  • tito13kfm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10AVI, MP4, OGG, MOV are all different containers. They are completely irrelevant to the codec used for compression. Check the FourCC code and see what it says about the video.
  • alexdagrate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8And the specs for the iPod specifically mention low-complexity video. Does anyone have experience playing High Complexity h.264 video on an iPod?
    http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html

    AAC also has high and low complexity profiles.. does this explain the poor sound quality of iTunes AAC files?
  • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7iTunes Producer. See link at the bottom.

    http://www.apple.com/itunes/musicmarketing/
  • lumbergh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Don't forget non-DRM'ed. And you can still drag your resulting movies into the iTunes library (if they are .mp4; not sure about .avi unless you have a quicktime codec to read it...)
  • smeager, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6On top of that Apple dosen't encode this stuff themselves. The studios be it music, tv or movie encode all of the media and provide it to iTunes Store to be sold. If its anybody fault for the quality it would be the studios and not apple.
  • Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Of course filters can introduce "information." Jesus, that's how sharpen filters work!"

    Um, before opening your mouth, you should learn how filters work. The only thing filters can do is move information around in the image. A sharpen filter (and indeed most filters) changes one pixel based on what it finds in the pixels surrounding it, and does that to every pixel of the image.

    How can Photoshop (or whatever, in the case of video) add information to the images? How does the software know about the mole on my left cheek, or the thin wire running up the side of that building, or whatever? Answer: it doesn't.
  • jpurnell, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7nope, just a screen cap with cmd-shift-4, and the default settings in Handbrake (H.264, constant rate of 1000 kbps)
  • jediorange, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Standard 16:9 DVDs are 720x480. Using handbrake, I can rip a movie at full DVD resolution, and get a higher quality smaller file size then the iTunes store offers. It isn't terrible, but it definitely isn't as good as it could be.

    iTunes movie: 640x272 1500kbps 1.5 GB Quality: Fair
    Handbrake : 720x306 1000kbps 1.0 GB Quality: Good

    Yes, I know it's a lower bitrate, but it still looks clearer then the iTunes movie (even at the lower resolution)
  • Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6On a blog, you typically insert a "jump link" in the middle of the text. The text before the jump appears on the front page of the blog, and then the link at the bottom says "continue reading" or something. Below it are other stories.

    This is done so as to provide a selection of stories on one page, rather than dominating the front page with one long story.

    When you click the link, it changes to show only one story, but the whole of the story (both above and below the jump link).
  • ohmar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5640x480 is what you are watching on TV and in DVDs, so, if you put a DVD into your computer with your big screen and watch it, it is a 640x480 stretched over the wide screen. It will be a while before HD comes into its own. But you know apple will be the first to embrace it, besides the porn industry, of course.
  • zang74, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Y'know, no-one's bothered to mention that neither video is being shown at native size. The window is too wide to be only 640 pixels. Meaning, there's scaling going on. Scaling varies from player to player. Some do it better than others, and depending on the size of the original verses the size it's being displayed at, larger amounts of interpolation may be needed..

    If the person taking this video is viewing this on a 1440 horizontal pixel display, a DVD image (with a width of 720 pixels) will scale PERFECTLY to 2x. A 640 width video, like that of iTunes Movies, won't scale perfectly into that size, and you'll be left with fractional interpolation, which guess what? LEADS TO BLURRINESS.

    I'm willing to bet the Handbrake file is being played via Quicktime, and the iTunes one via iTunes. The interpolation within iTunes pales in comparison to other quicktime-based methods like Quicktime Player or Front Row. In fact, I've seen a marked difference between the fullscreen playback of iTunes vs. the fullscreen playback of Front Row, on the same file, on the same machine.
  • r3zonance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"And the specs for the iPod specifically mention low-complexity video. Does anyone have experience playing High Complexity h.264 video on an iPod?"

    I don't think you can use High Complexity to be honest. That was why quite a few H.264 encoding tools needed to be re-written/changed when the 5th Gen iPods came out, cos you couldn't use the video on them.
  • smeager, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Encoding anything to h.264 is going to take some time even on fast machines. It is a very processor intensive codec. A lot of people can't even play it back without any difficulty because of the amount of processor power it needs.

    That being said, if you want to quicken the encoding time for Handbrake first rip your DVD to your HD with MacTheRipper. Reading the Video_TS folders from the HD will give you a faster read access then from the optical drive.

    Even though h.264 is an outstanding format with the quality of the rendered video, you are going to wait a substantial amount of time for the process to finish. On my iMac G5 w/iSight 2.1Ghz it would take on average 4-6 hours for a 2-pass encode (average 12fps), Since I don't want to wait that long I use the standard MPEG-4 Encoder (using FFmpeg) and I just bump up the average bitrate. It takes about 2 hours for a 2-pass encode, at about 36-42fps (for a standard length dvd) and quality is pretty good to.

    As for a DVDShrink type of application you can always use DVD2one or DVDRemaster. They are both paid programs and cost about $50. I recommend DVD2one for its ease of use and the ability to correct some of the mastering errors that are on today's DVD (especially Sony DVDs).
  • jgerry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3i find handbrake to be pretty slow too, but I'm running on a G4 Mac Mini, so I kind of expect it.

    What we really need is something like DVDShrink for the Mac. I love my Mac but I still rip DVDs on my PC because of DVDShrink. Auto or manual compression control, re-authoring, output straight to an ISO. Awesome.
  • tsunamisteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3People pick on 640 x 480 like they're going to watch a full length movie in full screen 20" from their montiors. Seriously, if you step away from your computer (though, I know) and sit at a reasonable distance (say, where a girlfriend would be on the couch), you'll see that 640 x 480 isn't too bad.

    Also, the human eye is very comparative. Seeing a side by side comparison of Handbrake and iTunes of course gives Handbrake an edge, but I bet if you just saw the iTunes movie by itself it would look just fine.
  • alexdagrate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Are you ripping the DVD's VIDEO_TS file to your hard drive first using an app like MacTheRipper and then encoding from the image set rather than the actual disc? It's much faster this way and won't wear out your optical drive.

    That said, it does take a long time to do a rip in Handbrake, but the quality is much more consistent than other methods on a mac, and since it's universal binary, a rip on a macintel is relatively fast and the quality is excellent.
  • lumbergh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Handbrake gives you the option of ripping to an .avi file that can use H.264 for the video and preserve the AC3 audio (as a passthrough) which will give you your 5.1 surround (although you should allocate a bit more target filesize for this). The resulting avi file is playable by VLC (videolan.org) on a Mac. I only do this for movies where a surround sound mix adds significantly to the enjoyment (i.e., action movies, as opposed to drama). Apparently the .mp4 file format doesn't allow AC3 audio as an option for some reason, but .avi does. .mov might, but Handbrake doesn't provide that option as a movie data container format.
  • trueimage, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This wil ltake off cuz most people don't know any better. But honestly, that picture quality is crap... and bigger file size? What a waste of effort. Must be some MPAA thing... why not have actual good quality video... my 20" wide lcd is 1680x1050, a 640x480 letterboxed movie stretched fullscreen? that will look great. Why don't they just look at what people are downloading on torrent/usenet: HR.HDTV rips of TV shows and DVDRips or HDTV caps that are compressed... we want better quality not worse!
  • sxtxixtxcxh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3does handbrake do 5.1 surround sound?
  • rssurvivor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4http://flickr.com/photos/jpiddy/242336024/

    thats the page where the pictures are
  • MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There's also a MediaCoder. I've used it, it does what it's supposed to, and is very simple to use, but also has plenty of tweakability for power-users.

    http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/
  • MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"High-Efficiency" AAC of (HE-AAC) is not playable on the iPod, or in iTunes. It uses spectral band replication (SBR), and is only really useful for low bitrates (like 80 Kbps and below). There would be no benefit to using it at bitrates higher than that, and codecs probably won't even let you.

    As for the video, they are probably using a very low-complexity version of H.264. HD-res H.264 files (like the Quicktime trailers from Apples site) are virtually unplayable on less than a 2 GHz computer. Even at the reduced 640x480 resolution, they have to be doing something to lighten the load on the iPod, especally since they now claim a 3.5 hour battery life.
  • YoGramMamma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure the iTunes movies have Dolby Sourround sound with every pic. I would think this would drive the file size up. Maybe this is what accounts for the difference in resolution/size when compared to Handbrake.

    I couldnt find exactly where i heard that they have the dolby surround, but if you do a quick google search for "itunes movie dolby surround" you see a lot of references to the fact the they do. Does handbrake encode the audio in Dolby? i was under the impression it didnt.. but again.. im no expert
  • aviazn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, I think it's because the cursor focus is on the bottom window. OS X greys out the title bar of background windows, similar to Windows.
  • jpurnell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it's brushed metal because it's in Quickime 7.1.3...the controls look pretty good for iTunes 7, I'm just not used to them yet.
  • streak, on 10/31/2007, -1/+3My recollection is 2-4X faster than real time conversion rates, using an 8-month-old Core Duo iMac. Not bad at all IMHO.
  • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That is the funniest thing I have read all day.
  • Abatrour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sorry, wrong thread.
  • jasondefaoite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thats 720x480 for NTSC, and 720x576 for PAL
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@ohmar

    the resolution for NTSC is 720x486 .. so no, 640x480 is not quite full resolution of television or dvds.
  • deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Try Auto GK: http://www.autogk.me.uk/
  • crackhammer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This discussion seems counterproductive to me... either the iTunes product does or does not render (or whatever) a better video than handbrake. I personally have noticed my video output from iTunes (winows) to be less crisp than before the upgrade when playing a recently purchased movie. I hope that if the iTunes video IS substandard, Apple will address it as quickly as possible, and I'm sure that we all feel the same way. Additionally, if Handbrake is a better product we should all flock to it if iTunes does not adjust their waistlines and declare that they will fix it.
  • SPThom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even if this isn't fake, it says nothing about the general quality of iTunes movies. The blurriness here seems to have nothing to do with its resolution (after all, the scale difference between NTSC DV and iTMS video isn't that great), and more likely to do with the quality of the original "transfer"... in other words, the copy the studio used to encode from. Studios are known for sometimes using bad transfers for DVDs, even when a better transfer already exists.

    I downloaded Kinky Boots last night and was impressed by the quality. I might have to swing by H'wood Video and rent it just to offer a comparison of my own.
  • newtonapple, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think Apple should really be offering full HD for $15. I can't help but to think about this every time I want to buy a movie off iTune: Blockbuster + handbrake = $3.99 v.s. iTune lower quality = $9.99. Apple really needs to give me a better reason than instant gratification. And I think full HD is the sweet spot, for me at least.
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