What makes a good / bad encode?

[nabelnabel]

Hello, I've been a collector or a long time but I'm very much a noob when it comes to the tech side of things. I understand encoding (seems) to be the video and audio settings that are chosen when making a blu-ray. Some of this stuff is obvious - a 1080p image is going to look better than a 720p image. Where I get confused is when I hear people talking about discs that have "bad encodes". What does that mean? I often see this when people compare different releases of the same movie. Is it just a general way of saying the disc looks and sounds better or worse? Or are there specific things you can look for that signify a bad encode? Thanks!

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by nabelnabel

Or are there specific things you can look for that signify a bad encode? Thanks!

Banding and quantizing noise. Most Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray disc should be mostly free from both. Many people blame an encode for problems when in fact it may well be the source material that is not up to par. Look at the videos in the Tom Scott on video compression and color space thread in this section.