If it’s something I really want. Absolutely. These days handbrake is pretty much all you need. We’ve come a long way since my days moderating over on the Doom 9 Forum way back in the early 2000s. Codec wise there really isn’t anything that would be more recommended for black and white. Black and white are colors. 16 million Shades of Black and White are still 16 million colors if that makes any sense. So a color encoder is generally going to do just as well. You’re not really going to save that much just because something is black and white. The codec that you might want to choose will generally depend more on the resolution of your content, and the hardware you intend to play it back on. Older Hardware might only support h264. Also DVDs, anything newer than h264 doesn’t really save you a lot of space. And takes more time to encode. H264 also uses smaller macro blocks which are generally preferable for lower resolution. When it comes to HD or 4K sources. Then h265 or AV1 should probably be your go-to’s. Unless again you are limited by playback hardware. The settings again depend a lot on your content. If it’s largely static scenes with Talking Heads. You can get by with some pretty insanely low bit rates. If it’s an action movie with lots of motion all over the place explosions etc etc etc. You’re going to need every bit of bitrate you can get. When it comes to basic settings? Under the video dialogue in handbrake. Whenever you select and encoder towards the bottom left there is a slider labeled preset. Which is sort of misleading. It is the motion estimation quality. You would generally never want it set to anything higher than medium and preferably closer to slower. As the name implies slower is slower. But it performs much better motion estimation. Which will create less blocking and artifacts when constrained for bitrate. Leaving more for those blacks which are often the first thing sacrificed. Bitrate wise. And easy rule of thumb is previous generations bit rate. Ripping DVD in h264 a VCD bitrate of 1–2 Mbps is pretty solid. 1080p? DVD bitrates of 5-9 Mbps in h265 or AV1 will save lots of space and keep excellent video quality. 4k, 20 to 35 Mbps h265 or AV1. A bit wasteful but generally visually lossless. If you take the time and do 2 pass you can go lower still.