A few questions about video...

[federman]

i have a ton of movies in itunes, but 99% are formatted for a 5th generation ipod.

should i:

1. re-rip the movies from dvd using the iphone preset in handbreak?

or

2. re-format the files i have useing isquint? and if so, what should i adjust to make the file sizes as small as possible, but remain best quality for the ipod touch?

please help

thanks

[RumMunkey]

I'm in the same boat. I was going to just re-rip the stuff I really care about (concert DVDs of my favourite bands, and my "fan-boy" films, like Star Wars).

When I looked over my library I found a bunch of titles that had been ripped weird (squeezed a 16x9 picture into the 4x3 space), so I ended up re-ripping a lot more than I wanted.

I don't have my touch yet so I don't know how bad a 320x176-ish rip will look when blown up to 480xwhatever, so I'll have to wait and see how much I am re-doing in the end.

As for settings, there are lots of threads here on that. Basically it boils down to what works for you.

Personally, I limit by file size because I've done a lot of tests and found that for my tastes, I don't mind a little bit of artifacting in stuff like silly comedies (Uncle Buck or Brewster's Millions, that kind of thing) and I'd rather have more choice than cinema-quality 1GB - 2GB movies. IT still looks 10x better than the non-HD channels I get on satellite on my big TV at home.

I'll pump up the rate as I go for concert DVDs, action movies or dark movies.

I don't output to TVs, so it only needs to look good on a 480 pixels screen, and the sound only needs to be in stereo.

YMMV. You gotta try a lot to come up with a recipe you like.

[nlivo]

dont bother re-encoding. they'll look fine on the touch. It would be a huge waist of time.

[BiikeMike]

Wirelessly posted (Treo: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/3.1.8295/1710; en; U; ssr))

I had a bunch of stuff ripped for my 5.5g, and I loaded it up on my touch, and it looks fine. Don't waste your time, at least not until you see a few on there!