Movies on Ipod - My Attempts and Learnings

[wnewport]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vranswer Same results as wnewport. My movie ended up being just under 700 MB, with the program preset at video 768 Kbps, audio 128 Kbps (mp4 & AAC). Pretty awesome. Enlarging the screen doesn't lose a lot of quality either, very scalable.

Has anyone tried putting this onto an ipod yet? Mine loaded into itunes perfectly, and seems to be A ok, but I don't have an ipod video......yet.

 

[kugino]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vranswer Same results as wnewport. My movie ended up being just under 700 MB, with the program preset at video 768 Kbps, audio 128 Kbps (mp4 & AAC). Pretty awesome. Enlarging the screen doesn't lose a lot of quality either, very scalable.

i figured those would be the respective bitrates...i know in handbrake i can set the movie size to 320x320 (or whatever vertical resolution scales with 320 horizontal). this makes the file size even smaller...are you guys doing that in your respective PC program?

 

[vranswer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kugino i figured those would be the respective bitrates...i know in handbrake i can set the movie size to 320x320 (or whatever vertical resolution scales with 320 horizontal). this makes the file size even smaller...are you guys doing that in your respective PC program?

Looks like you're stuck with various presets on Videora, as you just choose from a drop-down list. Now, for the hard part....I just got a 4GB nano and a 1GB Shuffle. Do I really need a 30 GB iPod video??????

AAARRRGGHHH!!!

 

[wnewport]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vranswer Looks like you're stuck with various presets on Videora, as you just choose from a drop-down list. Now, for the hard part....I just got a 4GB nano and a 1GB Shuffle. Do I really need a 30 GB iPod video?????? AAARRRGGHHH!!!

Short answer, yes with an if...
Long answer, no with a but...

 

[Mr.Sneis]

Watching aqua teen hunger force on an ipod... is the greatest thing EVAR!!!


Looks great, sounds great, takes forever to encode

 

[Taphil]

Well I wasn't able to get the H.264 file, 900kbps from Videora's 768kbps option, to transfer to the iPod. iTunes said it couldn't transfer it to the iPod but didn't say why. So I re-encoded it to a lower bitrate in Videora, and it still wouldn't play. So then I re-encoded it using 768kbps mpeg4 in Videora and it does work on the iPod.

I don't know what's wrong, but H.264 just didn't work for me.

 

[flecom]

ya its not working for me either, it appears they are aware of the issue and it has to do with the encoder...

anyhow, has anyone loaded a long video into their ipod? i loaded a movie and when i start fast forwarding it goes about 3~5 mins into the video and then stops and dumps me back into the video menu?

 

[blessingx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kugino "H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats"

Sorry if this has been discussed here already, but a few are recommending 480 x 480 MPEG4 over the iPods native resolution 320 x 240 H.264. For compression time, battery life (H.264 is Vorbis-like in this regard... and probably what Apple uses for its battery specs), and other device (computer, TV, etc.) playback. Anyone done any tests? A few weeks ago I was experimenting between MPEG4 and H.264 in Handbrake and the difference in encoding time was pretty dramatic. This was larger resolution than discussed here though. Just wondering if there is any advantages to using H.264 except maybe disk space. Plus I'm not sure how the ratio 480 x 480 would be handled (though I suppose this could be adjusted too).

 

[vranswer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taphil Well I wasn't able to get the H.264 file, 900kbps from Videora's 768kbps option, to transfer to the iPod. iTunes said it couldn't transfer it to the iPod but didn't say why. So I re-encoded it to a lower bitrate in Videora, and it still wouldn't play. So then I re-encoded it using 768kbps mpeg4 in Videora and it does work on the iPod. I don't know what's wrong, but H.264 just didn't work for me.

See, I don't understand this. I only see H.264 and SP in the Quality Profile in Videora (along with a few other cryptic options). But it saves the file type as mp4, as designated by the fact that the program appends the .mp4 extension to the name you type in. So is it an H.264 file or an mpeg4 file? I thought it creates an mpeg4 file using the H.264 codec. Am I not understanding the concept?

Also, did your original encoding play in iTunes 6, but then not on the iPod?

 

[Taphil]

Yes, the H.264 file played fine (relatively, with the crap that is QT) in iTunes, but iTunes wouldn't transfer it over to the iPod.

In Videora, H.264 encoding is shown as H.264, whereas I think SP is for mpeg4, which is what I used. H.264 and mpeg4 are two different encoders, both with *.mp4 extensions. You can tell what a video was encoded by by going to Window->Show Info in QT.

So I put on a 1:50 long video onto the iPod. I had used the iPod for testing sound quality for about an hour with lots of hard drive spinning caused by changing tracks a lot. Then I played the video (scrubbing through the video takes maybe 10 seconds, nothing longer when I used it) from the beginning and went to bed. This morning, the battery meter still showed about 1/8 of battery life remaining. So I think the battery life is as stated by Apple.

The strange thing about video playback on the iPod is that the hard drive spins up about once every minute or two. I don't understand why. My video file was 600MB, and divided by 110 minutes, that's ~5MB/min that the video data uses (which is ~800kbps, or say 3x more than a 256kbps audio file). The iPod's buffer is 32MB for the 30GB and 64MB for the 60GB model and holds about 20MB and 40MB respectively. So the hard drive should spin up only once every 4 or 8 minutes (or 3x the frequency of playing 256kbps audio), repectively. Instead, it's spinning up once a minute.

 

[wnewport]

So can someone confirm whether a video encoded with videora on the standard "H264/320x240/768kbps Stereo/128kbps" setting will play on the new ipod video?

Were there any issues at all with playback, picture quality, etc.?

 

[vranswer]

Can't speak for him, but if I'm reading Taphil's posts correctly they will NOT play on iPod. Appears you have to use the SP profile, not the H.264 profile.

 

[wnewport]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vranswer Can't speak for him, but if I'm reading Taphil's posts correctly they will NOT play on iPod. Appears you have to use the SP profile, not the H.264 profile.

Is that correct Taphil?

 

[Taphil]

That was my result testing with two H.264 profiles, the 768kbps and 384kbps options in Videora - they play in iTunes, but iTunes won't put them onto the iPod. I've read similar accounts over at Apple's board.

 

[wnewport]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taphil That was my result testing with two H.264 profiles, the 768kbps and 384kbps options in Videora - they play in iTunes, but iTunes won't put them onto the iPod. I've read similar accounts over at Apple's board.

So have you been able to get any videos onto the ipod? And if so could you list the exact profile you used.

I appriciate the information.