Handbrake Settings for New iPad (3rd Gen)

Question

What tweaks can be made to the existing presets for iPad output in Handbrake to optimize for new high resolution of the iPad 3rd Generation?

Answer 1

The iPad 3's H.264 playback chip is the same as the iPad 2 (and the new Apple TV's) - that is it will support up to:

1920x1080
30 FPS
High Profile at level 4.1

The biggest difference you'll find is that the 8x8 Transform option is now respected instead of being discarded when making sure the resulting settings matches Baseline or Main Profile specs.

The 8x8 transform is the single most useful feature of x264 in terms of compression-per-speed. It improves compression by at least 5% at a very small speed cost and may provide an unusually high visual quality benefit compared to its compression gain. However, it requires High Profile, which many devices may not support.

From Handbrake's tooltip on the 8x8 transform.