Guide on how to get the best video quality using Audials Movie 2024

Hey there :)
I am a little bit frustrated since there is no manual on how the things actually work. I just want to download movies via Audials in the best streaming quality. I did a lot of trial and error in the last days, so I thought it would be a good idea to share my findings.
Up till now, I only used Netflix but some of the key points are applicable to other streaming services for sure. I try to update this post regularly.

Goal and setup:
So in general, for streaming based content, it is recommended to use the mkv-file format with H.264 encoding. For audio I use mp3, but since I am only interested in stereo sound anyway, this is not my main focus. I have also the goal to use the 2x and batch recording with the internal player, just for higher convenience. I followed the recommendation I found in this forum and set the playback to fullscreen on my main monitor and left my whole PC idle for the recording time.

Naive settings:
So with this setup, a lot of questions arise. First and most important, I have to decide for an output format. I kept the flag on "record original if available" and made a custom preset. The simplest idea would be to select the MKV container and the H.264 / MP3 codec. I kept the other settings (frame resolution, frame rate, bitrate, gpu bitrate, audio bitrate) on original.
If I now start the recording form batch with 2x speed, two things occur as problems:
- the quality is just bad, the file sizes are pretty low. it also seems like the player itself shows the best available quality, but it somehow does not affect the saved file at the end.
- sometimes the movie starts at a weird position and not at the beginning as it should.

First fixes:
At first, let's fix the second problem. It's pretty easy what's going on here. If I use the internal player, the movie recording jumps to the position in the movie where I left it while adding it. So I you spend to much time "in the movie" while adding your movie to the queue, Netflix will save this position and continue from there if you start the recording. This obviously also applies if you have already started watching the movie before. You can fix with ease: After adding the movies you want to record, open a browser tab (extern/intern does not matter...) and go to your account settings. Go to edit settings and to viewing activity. Choose the movie you want to record from the list and click on "hide from viewing history" on the right. This should reset the viewing progress on the specific movie. :)
The quality itself is also fixable. I changed the bitrate and gpu-bitrate to exact matching (don't know the english name), and activated VBR (to save some disk space) with a quality level of 95 (good compromise imo). Now the saved video quality is really high, but not at highest. The problem with that is, that the audio on most videos is not in sync with the video... This seems to be a problem with the VBR setting interfering with the higher recording speed. The easy fix would be to set the recording speed on normal. This is really unsatisfying to me so I found a better fix.

Actual workflow I use:
I disabled the VBR setting instead and set the video bitrate to its maximum (29040 kbit/s) as well as the audio bitrate (320 kbit/s). This ensures that the original video stream is saved as it is in the highest available quality. A 2h 1080p movie now results in a 8-12Gb file with perfect quality. This also ensures the sync between audio and video in 2x recording speed. To reduce the file size, I do some postprocessing afterwards and convert the saved file via the internal converter with activated VBR quality level 95. I made a second preset for this. This results in a file size of about 4-5Gb with barely any quality loss. I can now do batch recording with 2x speed (ideally overnight) with perfect video quality. Unfortunately, some videos still have the 540p resolution limitation, but this is a Netflix DRM issue (different topic, already discussed in other posts).

I hope you find this helpful. :)