[Eug]

Original 1920x1080 HD video

Quicktime 7.1.2 Export Movie to iPod: 320x180 @ 0.8 Mbps
Quicktime 7.1.3 Export Movie to iPod: 640x360 @ 1.6 Mbps

The 640x360 iPod video looks pretty good most of the time, but there times where the video quality really falls down.


320x180 iPod video blown up to 640x360:




Native 640x360 iPod video:




Original HD video scaled down to 640x360:




It's unfortunate the the iPod doesn't have a tad more horsepower, cuz then Apple could either change the encoding settings or the bitrate to ensure more consistent video. That said, for most iPod to TV usage, the current Export Movie to iPod setting in QuickTime 7.1.3 should be pretty good.

[awcopus]

Thank you for taking the time to post this presentation.

I would be in no particular rush to buy Apple's 640x(up to)480 videos for anything other than the pure convenience of having particular content on your iPod without taking the time to Handbrake it yourself.

640x480 on a decent Plasma or LCD TV is going to look like kind of okay at best. People are used to the quality of DVDs and this just isn't there yet.

[Eug]

I would be in no particular rush to buy Apple's 640x(up to)480 videos for anything other than the pure convenience of having particular content on your iPod without taking the time to Handbrake it yourself.

Handbrake apparently does not work for this. It does not support the Baseline Low Complexity H.264 Profile required by the iPod.

Also, I suspect that the encoding quality by Apple will be better for their downloaded stuff. Even so, most of the time the QT encoding is actually pretty good. It seems though they have optimized it somewhat for speed. I would prefer better quality and lower speed, but I'm sure many people wouldn't.

[dazzla]

How are you using QT 7.1.3 to export to 640x360 h.624 compliant with the iPod? I couldn't fine the baseline setting in QT for exporting.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by dazzla

How are you using QT 7.1.3 to export to 640x360 h.624 compliant with the iPod? I couldn't fine the baseline setting in QT for exporting.

"Export Movie to iPod" is now 640xXXX H.264 with QT 7.1.3 (at about 1.6 Mbps including both audio and video).

It already has all the appropriate settings for the iPod of course.

[iDriveX]

Originally Posted by Eug

Handbrake apparently does not work for this. It does not support the Baseline Low Complexity H.264 Profile required by the iPod.

Also, I suspect that the encoding quality by Apple will be better for their downloaded stuff. Even so, most of the time the QT encoding is actually pretty good. It seems though they have optimized it somewhat for speed. I would prefer better quality and lower speed, but I'm sure many people wouldn't.

That's not true. Last night I ripped Dr. No (my own personal copy) with MacTheRipper Beta e13 on my MacBook and then ran it through Handbrake and endcoded it at 1200 bitrate using the Mp4 codec at the native 720x416 resolution and it worked beautifully in iTunes/Front Row on my Plasma and the iPod (5G) after firmware update. The whole file came in just over a GB.

[dazzla]

That's not h.264 though, you've always been able to do that with regular MP4 but 640*480 baseline h.264 is something new with 1.2.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by dazzla

That's not h.264 though, you've always been able to do that with regular MP4 but 640*480 baseline h.264 is something new with 1.2.

Just to be clear:

Handbrake has a "Baseline profile" H.264 that worked with the iPod, for 320x240 video. However, it does not work with 640x480 H.264 video.

For 640x480 H.264, the iPod needs "Baseline low-complexity profile". Handbrake does not support that (yet).

Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Low-Complexity Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

[iDriveX]

Why does everyone care so much about h.264? I did a DVD Rip of a Star Trek episode (The Best of Both Worlds, Pt.2 for reference) and asked my wife to take a look at the two comparitive samples on our television, one the uncompressed DVD rip, the other a 1200 bitrate Mp4 (not encoded using h.264), she could not tell the difference, as could other people.

[Simon]

File size.

[icruise]

Simon nailed it. You can get very good quality with Mpeg-4, but it's going to be considerably bigger than a file of the same perceived quality encoded in h.264. Personally, while I'm excited to see that Apple has increased the resolution for their files (320 x 240 was just not cutting it for viewing on anything but the iPod) I don't really feel like I want to re-encode the movies and TV shows that I already did at 320 x 240, simply because the file sizes would be commensurately larger. I ripped my DVDs with the idea that they would be viewed primarily on the iPod's screen, and I prefer the idea of getting lots of movies or TV shows on the iPod rather than having larger resolution files that would probably look about the same on the iPod anyway. That said, if and when Apple comes out with their "real" video iPod, I might change my mind.

[Eug]

Has anyone compared the quality of the 640x480 H.264 movies/TV shows on iTunes to my files? My guess is the Apple ones would be better and more consistent than the output from QuickTime. ie. I'm guessing they would never look this bad:



However, I can't check myself cuz I don't live in the US. We Canadians are shut out from that part of the store.

[Eug]

iTunes quality not so great:


DVD:




iTunes:



EDIT: Oops. Fixed. Thx Icruise.

[icruise]

You're misunderstanding what he's talking about. First of all, the shot on the top is from the DVD and the one on the bottom is from iTunes. But he's not talking about framing (since he's cropped both images). He's talking about picture quality. (I guess he means that the details are less sharp -- well duh).

[icruise]

By the way, here is the same scene from the trailer on iTunes. I haven't downloaded it (already have the DVD) but I see no reason to think that it's differently framed on the actual download. You'll see that it is considerably wider than both images above.

[Eug]

Yeah, I changed my post after you clarified it.

I'm not surprised it's not so great. You can only do so much with 1.6 Mbps I guess, esp. when using an easy to decode version of H.264 appropriate for the iPod. A little disappointing though still.

I was not-so-secretly hoping Apple would orphan 5G iPods and introduce new iPods with more robust H.264 decoding capabilities, with say 2+ Mbps H.264 with a better quality profile. It would have p!ssed a whole lot of people off, but hey.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by Eug

Yeah, I changed my post after you clarified it.

I'm not surprised it's not so great. You can only do so much with 1.6 Mbps I guess, esp. when using an easy to decode version of H.264 appropriate for the iPod. A little disappointing though still.

I was not-so-secretly hoping Apple would orphan 5G iPods and introduce new iPods with more robust H.264 decoding capabilities, with say 2+ Mbps H.264 with a better quality profile. It would have p!ssed a whole lot of people off, but hey.

You're right, I wish they'd go with real H.264 high profile rather than baseline. (I'm sure the iPod can't play it though ) My 1 mbps Matrix, Gladiator, xXx, The Incredibles, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Batman Begins, ect... all look amazing, are larger resolution, and smaller file size. I seriously can't tell the difference between the DVD and my rips at 1/8 the size. Handbrake is awesome BTW.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

You're right, I wish they'd go with real H.264 high profile rather than baseline. (I'm sure the iPod can't play it though ) My 1 mbps Matrix, Gladiator, xXx, The Incredibles, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Batman Begins, ect... all look amazing, are larger resolution, and smaller file size. I seriously can't tell the difference between the DVD and my rips at 1/8 the size. Handbrake is awesome BTW.

It's not even "Baseline" for the iPod. It's "Low Complexity Baseline" (which Handbrake doesn't support).

One can easily tell Handbrake's Main Profile 1 Mbps H.264 from DVD though. Lots of colour banding for example. 2 Mbps makes me happier, but 1.5 Mbps Main Profile would be fine.

Are you encoding stuff with High Profile? If so, how? Handbrake doesn't support it. I've never tried High Profile H.264 encoding myself.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by Eug

It's not even "Baseline" for the iPod. It's "Low Complexity Baseline" (which Handbrake doesn't support).

One can easily tell Handbrake's Main Profile 1 Mbps H.264 from DVD though. Lots of colour banding for example. 2 Mbps makes me happier, but 1.5 Mbps Main Profile would be fine.

Are you encoding stuff with High Profile? If so, how? Handbrake doesn't support it. I've never tried High Profile H.264 encoding myself.

No, I'm just using main, but I see no reason why Handbrake shouldn't support high profile other than a GUI for it hasn't been written yet... X264 supports it, and Handbrake uses X264 to do it's H.264 encoding.

[Eug Wanker]

So, how are people encoding stuff from DVD to iPod 640x480?

My 30 GB iPod should arrive relatively soon, and I'm thinking one way to do it is:

1) Rip DVD using a very high quality setting in Handbrake, at the appropriate resolution.
2) Take that video and then export to iPod using QuickTime 7.1.3.

Video will be about 12 MB per minute, so a 2 hour movie is about 1.4 GB.

P.S. There's hope for Handbrake getting the Baseline Low Complexity H.264 profile sooner rather than later, as ffmpegX recently got updated for this. What app. can I use to rip a DVD to a single VOB? From there I could just use ffmpegX to encode directly to iPod video.

[zerock]

someone told me to try, visualhub for this, but it's not free.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

So, how are people encoding stuff from DVD to iPod 640x480?

My 30 GB iPod should arrive relatively soon, and I'm thinking one way to do it is:

1) Rip DVD using a very high quality setting in Handbrake, at the appropriate resolution.
2) Take that video and then export to iPod using QuickTime 7.1.3.

Video will be about 12 MB per minute, so a 2 hour movie is about 1.4 GB.

P.S. There's hope for Handbrake getting the Baseline Low Complexity H.264 profile sooner rather than later, as ffmpegX recently got updated for this. What app. can I use to rip a DVD to a single VOB? From there I could just use ffmpegX to encode directly to iPod video.

Apparently, MacTheRipper 3.0 can rip to a single VOB. However, it's still in beta and I don't have it yet, so I can't test it.



However, I did try ripping another file for the iPod at 640w using ffmpegX. It didn't work. It completed in 1 second and gave me an uplayable file. Anyone else try ffmpegX's new 640x480 iPod setting?

[Eug Wanker]

There is apparently a new Handbrake alpha subversion that supports 640xXXX iPod H.264.

Unfortunately, you have to register to get it, and it's supposedly EXTREMELY buggy. Even worse, you have to compile it yourself because they think it's too buggy to distribute as a binary.

But at least it's a glimmer of hope.

In the meantime, I'm still having problems getting ffmpegX to work. So, what I'm doing is using Handbrake 0.7.1 to encode to MPEG4 at 4 Mbps (!) and then using that file with QuickTime to encode to iPod H.264. It works, but obviously it is a slow process. Quality is reasonably good though. Not stellar on a TV by any means, but quite OK, and very nice on the iPod screen of course.

[eddiecatflap]

i use eyetv 2.0's export feature

i have put many tv programmes recorded off air on my ipod 80 gig and played them back on a 32" B&O tv and have to say it's really reather good

shame there's no way to access the menu via the remote , but overall , very nice indeed

it's like an ultra portable pvr

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j55/flappo/export.gif

[michaelb]

I'm having a hard time understanding the attraction of storing a high bit rate, 640 pixel wide movie on an iPod which has a 320x240 screen.

If you aren't plugging the iPod into a TV (which I did about twice with my 4G photo, and never with my 5G, and I can imagine many owners are the same) the extra size is completely redundant.

Is this really what the default "Export to iPod" setting is in QuickTime 7.1.3?

Either Apple is getting ready to deliver an iPod with a larger, higher resolution screen, or they are keen to sell 80GB iPods by wasting <i>a lot</i> of hard drive space.


Personally, I make rips using Handbrake with the following settings:

1. Crop 1:2.35 movies to 16:9 so the details aren't too tiny (requires a few calculations with Calculator as DVDs have different mask areas).

2. Size 320x176.

3. H.264 Baseline profile.

4. Bit rate: 384 kbps. (H.264 excels at lower bit rates, it's a very scalable codec.)

5. 2-pass encoding (it makes a big difference, especially at low bit rates)

6. Sound 128 kbps AAC.

This produces a full 2 hour movies around 420MB in size. The result is perfectly acceptable for me. Occasionally there are blocks in dark areas, but generally the details are sharp and color saturation good. This is a 2.5" transflective LCD screen after all.

I also use EyeTV to export its digital TV recordings, and use similar custom settings using the QuickTime H.264 dialog. And Videora iPod Converter (Windows program) as converting .wmv is often hard on the Mac.

I'm amazed people are walking around with 1.8Mbps movies on their 5G iPods... YMMV, but I think this is a huge waste of drive space.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by michaelb

I'm having a hard time understanding the attraction of storing a high bit rate, 640 pixel wide movie on an iPod which has a 320x240 screen.

If you aren't plugging the iPod into a TV (which I did about twice with my 4G photo, and never with my 5G, and I can imagine many owners are the same) the extra size is completely redundant.

Bingo. I plug my 5G iPod into my TV.

I agree though, they should have kept the 320x240 iPod option for those who don't need the extra resolution.

However, I can see them releasing a 640xXXX iPod (or at least a 480xXXX) iPod sooner rather than later.

4. Bit rate: 384 kbps. (H.264 excels at lower bit rates, it's a very scalable codec.)

5. 2-pass encoding (it makes a big difference, especially at low bit rates)

It's faster to just use 1-pass, at a higher bitrate. It wastes space of course, but I don't keep all my videos on my 30 GB iPod at all times.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Bingo. I plug my 5G iPod into my TV.

I just hook up my MB or MBP to the TV directly and forget about all this converting and resizing nonsense.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

There is apparently a new Handbrake alpha subversion that supports 640xXXX iPod H.264.

Unfortunately, you have to register to get it, and it's supposedly EXTREMELY buggy. Even worse, you have to compile it yourself because they think it's too buggy to distribute as a binary.

The binary for the Handbrake 0.7.1 development build with baseline low complexity profile has now been posted. Check out the Handbrake forum for the link.

Note however that it supports PPC and VIDEO_TS folders only. It does not support encoding directly from DVD, nor does it support Intel Macs.

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

It does not support encoding directly from DVD, nor does it support Intel Macs.

Well, I'm boned.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Dakar

Well, I'm boned.

Well, if you're good with gcc, you could try compiling an Intel version yourself. If you register there you can get the source code.

EDIT:

I wonder if it will run on Intel Macs under Rosetta (very slowly).

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Well, if you're good with gcc, you could try compiling an Intel version yourself.

I'm so worthless, I don't even know what gcc is.

I'm a graphics guy.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Well, if you're good with gcc, you could try compiling an Intel version yourself. If you register there you can get the source code.

EDIT:

I wonder if it will run on Intel Macs under Rosetta (very slowly).

The Handbrake alpha works fine (with some bugs) on Intel Macs, under Rosetta. Yeah, it's very slow, but the files play fine on the iPod at 640xXXX.

My Core 2 Duo iMac 2.33 GHz is actually very slightly faster than my G4 1.7 GHz Cube. It's just slow compared to what I'm used to with the universal version.