iPhone 4 720p video full screen

[holyhandwalker]

Hi,

I am trying to see whether it is possible to play a 720p movie on the iphone 4 at full screen but have become a tad confused on the issue.

I can play a 720p movie on the iphone 4 that is either letterboxed (black bars at the top or bottom) or cropped (zoomed in so that some of the picture is lost), but I was wondering whether it was possible to encode the movie so that it plays 720p in true fullscreen?

I know the native resolution of the iphone 4 screen is 960x640, so when I downsized my movie file to this resolution, it did play properly in full screen, however, this is not 720p because 720p is 1280 x 720? When i therefore played a 1280x720 file, it letterboxed.

Therefore my question is, what aspect ratio/resolution do I need my video file to be to play 720p video in proper full screen on the iphone 4 without cropping/letterboxing?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Satori]

Hi,

I am trying to see whether it is possible to play a 720p movie on the iphone 4 at full screen but have become a tad confused on the issue.

I can play a 720p movie on the iphone 4 that is either letterboxed (black bars at the top or bottom) or cropped (zoomed in so that some of the picture is lost), but I was wondering whether it was possible to encode the movie so that it plays 720p in true fullscreen?

I know the native resolution of the iphone 4 screen is 960x640, so when I downsized my movie file to this resolution, it did play properly in full screen, however, this is not 720p because 720p is 1280 x 720? When i therefore played a 1280x720 file, it letterboxed.

Therefore my question is, what aspect ratio/resolution do I need my video file to be to play 720p video in proper full screen on the iphone 4 without cropping/letterboxing?

Thanks for any help.

I think you have pretty much answered your own question there. The resolution of the iphone is 960x640 and therefore you can't get true 720p playback.

However, with the pixel density of the iP4 you should still be able to get a stunning picture!

 

[holyhandwalker]

I think you have pretty much answered your own question there. The resolution of the iphone is 960x640 and therefore you can't get true 720p playback.

However, with the pixel density of the iP4 you should still be able to get a stunning picture!

ok so really then, the iphone 4's claim to be able to play 720p isn't technically true?

but anyway, if 960x640 is obviously the lowest resolution that will be played at the correct aspect ratio (and therefore be full screen on the iphone), what is the highest resolution that can be used and will still maintain the correct aspect ratio? or is this irrelevant because anything higher than the native resolution will not make a difference to picture quality? thanks.

 

[JCCL]

I have encoded 1280x720 video for my iPhone, using handbrake with a preset I found somewhere in the net. I was able to play it without any trouble.

 

[spblat]

I encode my 16:9 videos at 960x544 using a quality setting of 55 in Handbrake. They look terrific.

<Preset>
    <Name>iPhone 4 q55</Name>
    <Query> -i "J:\NLS\2010\file.wmv" -t 1 -c 1 -o "J:\NLS\2010\file-1.m4v" -f mp4 -w 960 -e x264 -q 22.75 -a 1 -E faac -6 stereo -R 48 -B 160 -D 0.0 -x ref=2:bframes=2:subq=6:mixed-refs=0:weightb=0:8x8dct=0:trellis=0 -v 1</Query>
    <PictureSettings>false</PictureSettings>
    <Version>0.9.4</Version>
  </Preset>

 

[Alisstar]

ok so really then, the iphone 4's claim to be able to play 720p isn't technically true?

but anyway, if 960x640 is obviously the lowest resolution that will be played at the correct aspect ratio (and therefore be full screen on the iphone), what is the highest resolution that can be used and will still maintain the correct aspect ratio? or is this irrelevant because anything higher than the native resolution will not make a difference to picture quality? thanks.

I think what they actually claim is that it can record video in 720p, not display it in 720p.

 

[Satori]

ok so really then, the iphone 4's claim to be able to play 720p isn't technically true?

It will output 720p to an HDTV and capture 720p through the video camera. I haven't seen any claim that it will play 720p on the retina display. Nor would it need to... while 720 lines of video greatly enhance the picture on a large HD telly you won't notice the difference on a tiny screen.

 

[holyhandwalker]

I have encoded 1280x720 video for my iPhone, using handbrake with a preset I found somewhere in the net. I was able to play it without any trouble.

but surely it didn't play at full screen without having to zoom in?

Thanks for the replies, so basically, the highest picture quality you can get on the iphone 4 screen will be 960x640, any higher than that will not make a difference to display quality, but will just take up more space on the iPhone?

 

[sammich]

You're confusing 'displaying' and 'able to play'.

The iPhone 4 (and even the previous iPhone 3GS) were actually able to play back full 1080p video. However this is distinct from being able to display every pixel in that video, which requires a display of at least that resolution.

Take for example the AppleTV, it can play back 720p videos...but it doesn't even have a screen? Did you question that?

 

[holyhandwalker]

You're confusing 'displaying' and 'able to play'.

The iPhone 4 (and even the previous iPhone 3GS) were actually able to play back full 1080p video. However this is distinct from being able to display every pixel in that video, which requires a display of at least that resolution.

Take for example the AppleTV, it can play back 720p videos...but it doesn't even have a screen? Did you question that?

ok so whilst the iphone can play 720p, it can't technically display it, so there is no point encoding anything aboves its native resolution of 960x640 because this is obviously all it can display?

Sorry for sounding thick, I'm just trying to clear this up in my head.

 

[sammich]

ok so whilst the iphone can play 720p, it can't technically display it, so there is no point encoding anything aboves its native resolution of 960x640 because this is obviously all it can display?

Sorry for sounding thick, I'm just trying to clear this up in my head.

That's no problem, there's no such thing as a stupid question.

If you're planning to watch something exclusively on the iPhone screen, don't have the video exceed 960 wide or 640 high.

 

[holyhandwalker]

That's no problem, there's no such thing as a stupid question.

If you're planning to watch something exclusively on the iPhone screen, don't have the video exceed 960 wide or 640 high.

that is indeed what i was planning, thank you.