iPod touch Best iTouch movie Resolution

[EricGo]

I don't have my Powerbook in front of me, but there's a non-h.264 encoder (ffMpegX? I Don't remember! ) and that's what I use.

I'll try to check tonight when I get home and let you know. It results in a dramatically faster encoding process.

I'm getting about 1x encoding speed (29 fps) using ffmpgeg and 480 X 272 for each pass.

Is that about the best I can expect ?
Is the second pass that much better across the gamut of movies I might encode ? (Hollywood, documentaries, and occasional European films).

Anybody have a notion what kind of encoding speeds good windows programs get on notebooks normalized for a 1.6 Ghz Core Duo cpu ?

Thanks for the useful information everybody !

 

[gloss]

I don't have my Powerbook in front of me, but there's a non-h.264 encoder (ffMpegX? I Don't remember! ) and that's what I use.

I'll try to check tonight when I get home and let you know. It results in a dramatically faster encoding process.

h.264 is slower to encode, but provides much better quality at the same bitrate, and the codec itself makes two-pass encoding far less necessary, if you're encoding material with lots of motion and don't want so many artifacting issues.

It is, without a doubt, the best codec to use, but at the expense of initial encode time.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

h.264 is slower to encode, but provides much better quality at the same bitrate, and the codec itself makes two-pass encoding far less necessary, if you're encoding material with lots of motion and don't want so many artifacting issues.

I encoded Nine Inch Nails' "... And All That Could Have Been" (a concert DVD whose lighting is notoriously difficult to compress) at 1Mb/s using ffmpeg and saw little to no noticeable artifacts.

That's good enough for me.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

I'm getting about 1x encoding speed (29 fps) using ffmpgeg and 480 X 272 for each pass.

Is that about the best I can expect ?

That's marginally better than my 1.5GHz G4 does, so I'd say 'yes'.

 

[gloss]

I encoded Nine Inch Nails' "... And All That Could Have Been" (a concert DVD whose lighting is notoriously difficult to compress) at 1Mb/s using ffmpeg and saw little to no noticeable artifacts.

That's good enough for me.

Well, point being that you could probably encode it at 600-700kb/s h.264 without issue.

Intel machines are much, much, much faster at encoding h.264 than PPC machines, though, so the difference in time spent is pretty marginal. My Rev A Core Duo Macbook (2.0ghz) encodes h.264 directly from DVD at better than 30fps, so good enough for me.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Well, point being that you could probably encode it at 600-700kb/s h.264 without issue.

I know ... but it would take days to encode some of this stuff.

Intel machines are much, much, much faster at encoding h.264 than PPC machines, though, so the difference in time spent is pretty marginal.

I'm waiting until I have an Intel Mac and an Apple TV to encode my full DVD collection. Once I do, it'll be h.264 at native resolution. I'm not sure of the bitrate yet, but it'll probably weigh in around 1GB per hour.

 

[gloss]

I know ... but it would take days to encode some of this stuff.

I'm waiting until I have an Intel Mac and an Apple TV to encode my full DVD collection. Once I do, it'll be h.264 at native resolution. I'm not sure of the bitrate yet, but it'll probably weigh in around 1GB per hour.

Oh, I totally agree. If I were using a PPC machine I would stick with ffmpeg as well - relatively speaking, the Intel machines are just scary-fast at video compression. But if you've got the hardware, I've found that h.264 is a good trade-off.

I find it amazing that using a two-year-old laptop I can transcode 10 hours of video in about 5 hours, put all on a beautiful, wafer thin touch-screen palmtop computer, and have the ability to watch it wherever I go. I couldn't have dreamed about technology like this six or seven years ago.

I mean, remember when we all laughed at people's 'over-the-top' full-screen iPod mockups? It wasn't all that long ago.

 

[CalmEnvy]

I use 640x352 @ 1024kbps. Use Handbrake to encode, doing Lost episodes right now and get an average of 88fps when encoding.

 

[EricGo]

My Rev A Core Duo Macbook (2.0ghz) encodes h.264 directly from DVD at better than 30fps, so good enough for me.

Is this using the OS X version of Handbrake, ripping and encoding from a commercial DVD ? To what resolution ?

Now I am wondering about one size encoding for multiple screens. My family uses a 720p plasma, iTouch, and the latest Nano (I think 320 x 240). Any thoughts about just leaving sDVD in its native resolution minus the black bars ? E.g., encoding 16:9 material at 720 x 405 ? Seems like a good fit for the iTouch and Plasma, but less so for the Nano.

 

[joefinan]

720x405 won't play on the Touch.

Will it??

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

max res for touch and nano is 640x480, which is what the iTunes store offers for its downloads.

 

[Dunk the Lunk]

* Hollywood is anticipating the demise of the DVD format (changeover to BluRay HiDef). They figure they make more money by no longer paying the royalty to the protection companies on every disk they sell, than they lose by illegal copying. They are anticipating the all digital and encrypted source to screen methods like HDMI will provide much better protection in the future. Also they are moving to include pre-ripped copies for use on media players that support DRM.

Anybody got any idea if any more of these DVDs have shipped apart from Family Guy-Blue Harvest?