HandBrake offers detailed control over each encode, however, most people would prefer to skip customizing everything. That’s why HandBrake also comes with dozens of presets, each a one-click configuration of all encoding options. But what if those aren’t precisely what you need?
Let’s show you how to create custom presets for effortlessly encoding your videos to various quality targets.
How to Create a Custom Preset in HandBrake
The only requirement for this article is to have HandBrake installed—you candownload HandBrake from its official site. For an entirely automated solution that’s best for batch-processing hundreds of files, see our guide onhow to turn your Windows PC into a distributed transcoding powerhouse with Tdarr.
For this guide, we’ll create a preset for encoding videos with the highest possible quality and then iterate to create progressively lower-quality presets.
1. Highest Quality
Start by dragging a video file on HandBrake’s window to import it.
In theSummarysection, choose MP4 or MKV as your outputFormatfrom the drop-down menu. If you’re not creating this preset to produce videos for online sharing, leaveWeb Optimizedunchecked.
KeepAlign A/V StartandPassthru Common Metadatachecked. The first will ensure audio and video are synchronized when playback begins; the second will “pass” any metadata from the original file to the produced file.
Dimensions
In theDimensionssection, set your monitor’s native resolution as theResolution Limit. If you also want to play your encoded files on other screens (like a 4K TV), use the highest available resolution. If you don’t remember those pesky numbers, see our article onhow to find out your screen resolution.
Leave all the other options at their default values. Double-check thatCropping,Anamorphic, andDisplay Sizeare set toAutomatic, thatOptimal Sizeis enabled, and thatAllow Upscalingis disabled.
The settings in theVideosection significantly impact the visual quality and size of the produced files. See our guide onwhich video codecs you should use on Windowsfor more information on why we’ll use different codecs for our profiles.
Since we’re creating the highest quality preset first, choose theAV1 10-bit (SVT)as yourVideo Encoder. Set the rest of the settings as follows:
Final Tweaks
Click onSave New Presetand give it aNamelike “Highest Quality”.
LeaveCategoryset toCustom Presets, and ensure theResolution Limitstates the maximum resolution size you’ve selected before.
Click onSelection Behaviornext toAudioto customize how HandBrake should select and encode audio tracks. Choose the languages you want to keep from theAvailable Languageslist, and click onMove Rightto enable keeping them by adding them to theSelected Languageslist.
UnderAudio Passthru Behaviour, you can define which audio encoding types should be kept instead of re-encoded. KeepAAC,AC3,FLAC, andOpusenabled since those are the formats to which you should re-encode your audio. KeepOpus, which offers the best quality-to-size ratio, as yourFallback encoder.
Under theAudio encoder settings for each chosen track:
Finally, clickSaveto store your tweaks and return to the previous window.
As for subtitles, click onSelection Behaviornext toSubtitles. Then, as with the audio streams, use the two lists at the top to choose the subtitle languages you’d like to keep from the original files.
If you’d like, enableAdd Closed Captions when available. LeaveForeign Audio Scanenabled to ensure if only a handful of scenes in the original file contain captions for a foreign language, HandBrake will find and preserve them.
LeaveBurn-In Behaviourset toNoneto have HandBrake include any subtitles in the final file as separate streams. Otherwise, it will “burn them in”, and they will always be visible on the output videos with no way to disable them.
Click onSave, and when you return to theAdd Presetwindow, click onAddto save your new Preset.
2. High Quality
Let’s tweak the preset we just made to quickly and effortlessly create the next one:
Savethe changes and thenAddyour second preset to your collection.
3. Medium Quality
We’ll take a hit in quality for our Medium preset to significantly boost encoding speed.
Start in theDimensionstab, and set theResolution Limitone setting lower than what you used in your other presets. In our case, we went for720p HD. Leave everything else as is.
Move to theVideotab, and set the options as follows:
Save the new preset with a name like “Medium Quality”. Change the previous audio settings to reduce theOpuscodec’sBitrateto192. Also, change itsMixdowntoDolby Pro Logic IIorDolby Surround, since those can preserve some positional audio properties without storing individual streams for multi-channel audio.
Leave everything else as is, andAddthis preset to save it in HandBrake’s list.
4. Low Quality
For the Low Quality preset:
5. Lowest Quality
For the Lowest Quality, we’ll see two possible solutions. Which one you’ll choose depends on your PC’s hardware.
If you’re not using an NVIDIA GPU, you’re able to still use hardware-accelerated encoding. Visit HandBrake’sTools>Preferencesmenu. Move to theVideopage and enableAllow use of Intel QuickSync EncodersorAllow use of the AMD VCN Encoders, depending on your hardware.
you may then choose one of those encoders for turbo-boosted encoding. Both usually produce lower-quality results than NVIDIA’s NVEnc and the CPU-based x264 encoder. Thus, we suggest you only use them if you prioritize encoding speed.
Trying Out Your Presets
With all your presets set up, it’s time to try them out. Import a video you want to keep with the highest possible quality, click onPresetson the top right, and scroll to locate and select theHighest Qualitypreset we created. ClickAdd to Queueon the top left.
Then, import a video you don’t care about. This time, choose theLowest Qualitypreset. Add this encode process to HandBrake’s queue as well.
Click onStart Encodeand keep tabs on the process.
Although the process is also affected by your source files, the first encoding of your high-quality video should be much slower than the second one, which, in comparison, should be blazing-fast. You can tell by theFPSrate that at the bottom of HandBrake’s window in its progress bar summary.
Three-Click Prioritized Encoding
HandBrake’s built-in presets cover many bases and are great for the average user who wants to effortlessly encode content for their devices in generic formats. However, they don’t account for how we prioritize our video files based on how we value their content.
Thanks to the presets we’ve created here, you can ensure the videos you want to preserve forever will be encoded in the best way possible, while the rest won’t take eons to encode while eating up your storage.
