My attitude is, if efficiency/file size is important at all, choose the slowest preset that you're willing to wait for then adjust quality until it's what you want :) If it's not important at all, you probably don't need to transcode. They may be useful for certain requirements ie real time encode where file size isn't so much an issue, but for such requirements hardware encoders are good these days. That said, I would recommend against the ultrafast or superfast settings on either x264 or x265 for general use as they do make a lot of compromises to the point where you are basically losing the benefit of using that codec. Use what you want, it's nonsensical to avoid a particular preset because the internet says it's not as good, because if it's good for what you want, it's good. In theory the faster preset will mean that for the same perceptual quality file size may be a little higher. Since changing the present alters not only the encoding efficiency but the relationship between RF values and output (if using CRF) you'll just need to visually evaluate the rate factor you want after changing the preset. There's nothing wrong with using a faster encoding preset if you want the encoding to be faster, because that's what it's for. The presets alter the balance between encoding speed and encoding efficiency - which is quality per bitrate. I need to wait and test what I can though, so I’m encoding with different presets, but that may take at least a day due to the processing power of it all. Thanks for your help! Based on what others have said I think I’m going to try slow/medium. I have a lot of storage, but as my library grows I want it to not get overwhelming, that being said it is still a lower priority than quality. My best reference is my computer monitor, and something that looks fine there can also just not look very good on a new tv, so I want to make sure I’m not leaving quality on the table when encoding it, so I won’t have to re-encode in the future. I don’t have the screen I want to use now, I’m probably going to get a new tv in a year or so, so I can’t test it. I can’t stay on h.264 10-bit anyway because apparently no devices support it other than computers, and transcoding using that codec is inconsistent and freezes my playback. I’m encoding in h.265 so it’s more efficient when streaming the content when I’m away from home, and so I can use the 10-bit color format. Lastly, why do you need to re-encode your whole library? h265 can be 10-25% smaller depending on the encode, so if space is that critical for you then maybe, but otherwise you should have any problems with h264 it is really worth all the time you'll spend doing that?

I've made my living for twenty years using a camera, so I'm used to scrutinizing all of this stuff, but I actually use 'fast' (gasp!) because when I'm sitting on my couch watching a movie from 9' feet away, 99.5% of the time it looks great to me, and it's not worth slowing all my encodes down to 2 fps in order to get that last 0.5% looking 'perfect.' I'd rather spend my time enjoying my movies then re-encoding them for the fourth time. Every online documentation is going to have different opinions on whether use medium or slow or veryslow or fast or whatever, but that just like, their opinion, man. Not to repeat one of the common lines on here, but how does it look to you? Do you notice any quality differences when encode a small section at slow vs slower vs veryslow and then play it back in the environment that you'll be watching it in? (don't do screencaps and pixel-peeping) How to Rip Blu-ray with Handbrake » #-inline-items.

Handbrake blu ray encode very big