Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

janey

macrumors 603
Dec 20, 2002
5,316
0
sunny los angeles
if i actually cared for it i'd get my tv in 1080p...but how is this anything new when i can already get 720p content (just not DRMd from the iTunes store)...
 

synth3tik

macrumors 68040
Oct 11, 2006
3,951
2
Minneapolis, MN
I find the Apple shows to be oddly big for such crappy quality, regardless of what kind of quality it's available at.



It's the H264ness of it all. I have been recently moving all shows over to iTunes and to h264 format for consistency. all my AVI files run around 700MB, encoded over to H264, 1Gig. I do know exactly what your talking about.
 

janey

macrumors 603
Dec 20, 2002
5,316
0
sunny los angeles
It's the H264ness of it all. I have been recently moving all shows over to iTunes and to h264 format for consistency. all my AVI files run around 700MB, encoded over to H264, 1Gig. I do know exactly what your talking about.
I have seen some amazing x264 encoded videos at 720p/1080p that are smaller than Apple's. Apple doesn't really have an excuse for the ****ty quality.

Like this one from a tv show from last night (1.5mb file, you've been warned...): http://applegoddess.org/temp/desperatehousewives.png
 

MacBoobsPro

macrumors 603
Jan 10, 2006
5,114
6
The 'H264ness' is an odd thing. Many people have told me it adds to the file size and loses quality. SJ said you get great quality at reduced file sizes. Confused I experimented (by no means comprehensively :p ) and found that when using Handbrake to rip DVDs using H264, it took twice as long to rip, but gave better quality results than the Mpeg option and came out with almost the same file size.

So I think H264 is very good (but slow to encode).
 

iSee

macrumors 68040
Oct 25, 2004
3,539
272
It's the H264ness of it all. I have been recently moving all shows over to iTunes and to h264 format for consistency. all my AVI files run around 700MB, encoded over to H264, 1Gig. I do know exactly what your talking about.

How are those AVI's encoded? I thought that h.264 was supposed to be pretty good, but I would definitely like to use something that makes smaller files for near-DVD quality video. And h.264 is sooo sloooowwww to encode to.
 

ruftytufty

macrumors member
Jan 4, 2005
96
1
Berkeley, CA
It's the H264ness of it all. I have been recently moving all shows over to iTunes and to h264 format for consistency. all my AVI files run around 700MB, encoded over to H264, 1Gig. I do know exactly what your talking about.

This is not a very useful test for measuring the size/quality of h264 vs. AVI files. The size of the resulting h264 file can be controlled by adjusting the quality settings in the h264 encoder. But, since you're encoding from an (encoded/compressed) AVI file, the quality of the resulting h264 file can be no better than the AVI file, and probably somewhat worse, due to the decoding/re-encoding process.

A better test would be to start from original, uncompressed video, and encode it to both AVI and h264, adjusting the settings so that the resulting quality is comparable in both. h264 claims to be better, so if that's true, then the resulting h264 file should be smaller than the AVI file.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.