For nearly two decades, RARBG was a titan in the digital torrenting world. While the site shut down in 2023, its legacy lives on through its meticulously crafted internal releases. Among tech-savvy archivists and home theater enthusiasts, one question remains persistent: What encoding settings did RARBG use for their x265 (HEVC) releases?
The "RARBG x265" profile became legendary for balancing tiny file sizes (often 1.5GB to 2.5GB for a 1080p movie) with surprisingly high visual fidelity. This article deconstructs the exact command lines, CRF values, preset tunings, and filter chains that defined the RARBG encode style. Whether you want to replicate their quality or simply understand why their releases looked better than other scene groups, this is your technical deep dive. Rarbg X265 Encoding Settings
RARBG didn't use medium or fast. They consistently used slow or slower. Why? Because the slow preset enables --no-strong-intra-smoothing and better motion estimation (umh). It takes twice as long to encode, but it preserves fine film grain and texture. Speed was never the priority; fidelity was. For nearly two decades, RARBG was a titan
RARBG didn't use a strict bitrate target; they used CRF. However, based on release logs, here is the predictable output they achieved: The "RARBG x265" profile became legendary for balancing
| Source Resolution | Source Type | CRF Value | Average Bitrate (Typical) | File Size (90-min film) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | 2160p (4K) HDR | Movie | 18 | 8-12 Mbps | 8-12 GB | | 1080p | Movie (Clean) | 19 | 3,500 - 5,000 kbps | 2.5 - 3.5 GB | | 1080p | Movie (Grainy) | 20 | 6,000 - 8,000 kbps | 4 - 6 GB | | 720p | Movie | 21 | 1,500 - 2,500 kbps | 1.2 - 1.8 GB | | 1080p | Anime | 18 | 2,500 - 3,500 kbps | 1.8 - 2.5 GB |
Key insight: Notice that grainy 1080p movies often landed at a higher bitrate than clean 4K streams. RARBG prioritized allocating bits where needed.
No discussion of RARBG x265 settings is complete without addressing audio. They almost never used DTS or TrueHD. Their standard was AAC 5.1 at 384kbps or Opus at 192kbps.
HandBrakeCLI -i source.mkv -o output.mkv \
--encoder x265_10bit \
--quality 19 --encoder-preset medium \
--encopts "aq-mode=3:aq-strength=1.0:no-sao=1:deblock=-2,-2:limit-sao=1:rskip=2:psy-rd=1.0:psy-rdoq=4.0" \
--aencoder av_aac --ab 384 --mixdown 5point1 \
--comb-detect --decomb \
--no-dvd-subtitles