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iPod touch Good Bitrate For iPod Touch Videos

D

dKran

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 28, 2007
97
0
Hey
i do not have my iPod Touch yet (no stores near me have gotten any in yet), but i am in the process of converting everything for it, and since i don't have a Touch to test videos on, i was wondering what everyone else finds a good bitrate to convert videos at. I will only be watching them on the touch, so it just has to look good on there, i won't be outputting to tv or anything.

thanks a lot for the help.
 
you would be safe of with 768kbps. That's quire a high bitrate. For animated shows ,you can go as low as 384kbps
eidt: I'm talking h.264
 
Handbrake's homepage says bitrates up to 2500 kbps are supported by the iPhone / iPod touch. I made a test yesterday. The iPod touch was able to play bitrates from 960 up to 4800 kbps :D.

And the quality is awesome, even at 960 kbps. Anyway I had the totally subjective impression that two-pass encoded films looked slightly better.
 
I usually use 650kbps h264, usually two pass but it looks great with only one pass too.

I'd imagine you could probably go further and take it to about 600kbps h264 as long as you do two passes. An extra pass doesn't increase the file size, it's only the bitrate I think, so that's a pretty good way to save space but still keep the quality.
 
I use 500 kbps (H.264) and it looks pretty good. Not perfect, but more than good enough for me and the files sizes are obviously smaller.

I might switch to around 600 or so though, I don't need to carry that many movies around with me. I know that extra 100 kbps will smooth things out.

An extra pass doesn't increase the file size, it's only the bitrate I think
Click to expand...

It doesn't increase either (it doesn't make sense otherwise, if you think about it. ;) ). What it does do is allow the encoder to allocate bits more effectively (more bits for high actions scenes, less bits for static scenes.)
 
madmaxmedia said:
I use 500 kbps (H.264)
I might switch to around 600 or so though, I don't need to carry that many movies around with me.
Click to expand...

Why not just switch to 800/1000kbps then? Yes, it takes up more space, but you know it's going to be good quality. I'd much prefer to have video in it's original quality and take up more space than have lots of (slightly) pixellated stuff.
 
Dave10492 said:
Why not just switch to 800/1000kbps then? Yes, it takes up more space, but you know it's going to be good quality. I'd much prefer to have video in it's original quality and take up more space than have lots of (slightly) pixellated stuff.
Click to expand...

Well, I have been using 600 and the results have been great. No problems and most movies have been around 740 megs. I'm happy.
 
dagored said:
Well, I have been using 600 and the results have been great. No problems and most movies have been around 740 megs. I'm happy.
Click to expand...
Just to make sure. You mean 600kbps for video and 128 for audio. Or you mean 600 for both audio and video combined.
 
unless you plan to watch same video file on big screen computer, imho, anything >500 is a waste of space.
 
clevin said:
unless you plan to watch same video file on big screen computer, imho, anything >500 is a waste of space.
Click to expand...

Well, maybe it was just my eyes deceiving me, but I was almost certain I could tell there was slightly more pixellation in an 800kbps encode of CSI vs a 1000kbps one. The episode itself (according to vlc) ranged from about 700kbps in parts, all the way up to 2500kbps in others. It was a 350MB episode, if that makes any difference.
 
I just converted a batch of ER episodes to 1000kbps, which look absolutely crystal on my touch, and a filesize of 350MB per episode. I am going to explore lower bitrates, but I'd consider 1000kbps the maximum you should go if you need amazing video.
 
EssentialParado said:
I just converted a batch of ER episodes to 1000kbps, which look absolutely crystal on my touch, and a filesize of 350MB per episode. I am going to explore lower bitrates, but I'd consider 1000kbps the maximum you should go if you need amazing video.
Click to expand...
1000kpbs @ 350MB per file is too much for such a small device. 350MB is generally my source file size for a DivX encode of a TV show.

I'm trying to cap TV episodes at 200MB which means using a rate of between 700-800kbps. The result is perfectly watchable on the touch.

SFK
 
EssentialParado said:
I just converted a batch of ER episodes to 1000kbps, which look absolutely crystal on my touch, and a filesize of 350MB per episode. I am going to explore lower bitrates, but I'd consider 1000kbps the maximum you should go if you need amazing video.
Click to expand...

Is ER an hour long or half an hour? Cause if it is half an hour than DAMN that a huge file!
 
Hey guys, what do you use to get rid of the CSS on your DVDs? Is there a free software out there that works well for this and is easy for a noob?
 
gvegastiger said:
Hey guys, what do you use to get rid of the CSS on your DVDs? Is there a free software out there that works well for this and is easy for a noob?
Click to expand...

mac the ripper or handbrake, both are free

we should not be talking about breaking CSS tho, kinda illegal?
 
ive been using 256kbpps (combined total of 384kbps) and thats fine on the ipod. but when you move to tv that looks disgusting, i find 512kbps (combined of 640kbps) is fairly good quality.

seeing as tho the lower end HD are encoded at ~1000knps its pretty darn good quality, especially on such a small device.
 
Handbrake doesnt work with copyrighted material.

And I dont find ripping my own movies onto my computer illegal. But thats just my opinion and not a legal ruling.

Am I breaking forum rules by asking this?
 
gvegastiger said:
Handbrake doesnt work with copyrighted material.

And I dont find ripping my own movies onto my computer illegal. But thats just my opinion and not a legal ruling.

Am I breaking forum rules by asking this?
Click to expand...

The mac one does... I dont think the windows one does though.
 
You'll need to use something like DVD Decryptor to rip the DVD to your local HDD and de-CSS it before using Handbrake on windows. Works a treat though! *watches Borat on shiney new iPod touch* :D

SFK
 
Dave10492 said:
Why not just switch to 800/1000kbps then? Yes, it takes up more space, but you know it's going to be good quality. I'd much prefer to have video in it's original quality and take up more space than have lots of (slightly) pixellated stuff.
Click to expand...

At 500 kbps, I get only a slight amount of noticeable visual artifacts, if at all. If I was specifically looking for compression artifacts (instead of just watching the movie), I might notice more. But at 500 kbps I watch movies without ever being distracted by artifacts. I also tend to watch a lot of older movies, so that's a bit different than say watching a lot of modern epic/CGI stuff where artifacts would be more noticeable (and more prevalent due to lots of action scenes.)

Doubling my file sizes (say at 1000 kbps) wouldn't be worth it to me, compared to say the extra amount of music I could put on it.

But yeah, it's a tradeoff no matter what (on the Touch due to storage capacity), and the best balance is going to be different for each person.
 
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