In Visual Hub, is H.264 better quality?

[knobtwiddler]

When converting video to ipod format to be viewed on a tv, is the H.264 option better quality. It says it's a smaller file so to me it seems that more copression would mean less quality. Oh and if you're wondering why i'm watching it on tv through the ipod instead of just converting to dvd, for some reason my blu ray won't play audio from homemade dvd's.

 

[huntercr]

When converting video to ipod format to be viewed on a tv, is the H.264 option better quality. It says it's a smaller file so to me it seems that more copression would mean less quality. Oh and if you're wondering why i'm watching it on tv through the ipod instead of just converting to dvd, for some reason my blu ray won't play audio from homemade dvd's.

Better quality than ... what? DVDs? No, they're not better quality than DVD's which are MPEG2 codec. H.264 is a more advanced algorithm ( MPEG4 ) that will give you smaller files for any given movie than MPEG2 would, with little perceived quality loss. Theoretically a high bitrate MPEG4 file *could* be higher quality than an MPEG2 file in that it has more advanced motion detection and higher resolution subsampling ( I think that's what it's called ), but in reality you're not going to find this, especially for movies you're playing from your ipod.

Now, lets get back to your question... are you asking if it's possible to have DVD quality H.264 files to play through your ipod onto your TV? Well, try it You'll probably be happy with it.

There should be presets in visualhub for this. The maximum data rate for ipod classic and ipodtouch is 2.5Mbit 640x480 30fps.

You might also consider using handbrake since Visualhub is no longer supported.

 

[lostless]

H.264 is much cleaner than regular mpeg4 at smaller file sizes. Just try an example by converting to one format then the other. Just note that H.264 takes longer to encode. On an intel mac, the difference is not much, but on a PPC mac, H.264 takes forever.