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iPhone 4 has awfull video compression

D

davidhawkins123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 21, 2010
178
0
England
ok so i just to a video that was 1:38, and the file was a whoping 128mb !!!!!!!!

on my kodak 720p video camera it would be like 20mb

i think apple messed up or indeed forgot about file compression, i thought they were all about the .h37856y83 or whatever comprssion and how good it was
 
You want more compression???? I want less. I want quality. You can always compress later but you can't improve the quality once it is removed. I can get about 10 minutes per GB on the i4. No need to make the video any worse.
 
all i'm saying is that i dont think the video is being compressed enough, i really think apple should work on this but without losing the quality
 
davidhawkins123 said:
all i'm saying is that i dont think the video is being compressed enough, i really think apple should work on this but without losing the quality
Click to expand...

I agree completely. I feel you should be able to sit in a movie theater, record the entire film in HD and then be able to email it out to all of your friends as you leave the cinema. Would save you a lot of time trying to explain what it was about the next day.
 
davidhawkins123 said:
ok so i just to a video that was 1:38, and the file was a whoping 128mb !!!!!!!!

on my kodak 720p video camera it would be like 20mb

i think apple messed up or indeed forgot about file compression, i thought they were all about the .h37856y83 or whatever comprssion and how good it was
Click to expand...

Video compression is NOT YOUR FRIEND. The bigger the file, the better the quality. Here the analogy "bigger is better" is TRUE. The more you compress a video, the worse the image becomes. It's no surprise your Kodak (of all things) is compressing your video to 20mb.

Enjoy and revel in the bliss of having delicious, crisp and enjoyable video that hasn't be completely butchered by compression.

You can thank me later for this insightful post. :cool:
 
I agree with the OP. For instance, I like friends to send me videos of their pets and I'll be all like "Holy crap is that a cat or a pterodactyl?" It's so much more fun guessing. Another time he recorded a video of him pretending to have been hit by a car! It might have been authentic, but I couldn't really tell. W... I'm still laughing about that one!
 
iPhone4 records 720p at about 1.3 Mbps.

This is very "good" compression. Good in the sense that you're getting a lot of picture quality for a relatively small file. DVD bitrates are in the 3-8Mbps range, for a smaller/poorer image. And 1080p Blu-Ray bitrates are comparatively massive.

If you're concerned about file size, upload your videos directly to YouTube and delete them.
 
davidhawkins123 said:
all i'm saying is that i dont think the video is being compressed enough, i really think apple should work on this but without losing the quality
Click to expand...

I'm sure when Apple makes an 8-core iPhone and hooks up a lead acid battery to it, they'll do a better job with compression, I'm sure.

Instead, Apple is using a codec that is optimized for the video encoding/decoding hardware within the iPhone. It provides a reasonable amount of video quality, a reasonable amount of compression, does it in real time, and doesn't chew through the battery too much. It fits within the compromises of the hardware and meets the demand of the users.


On the other hand, you can take the iPhone video, and re-encode it on an i5 MacBook Pro to whatever specs you prefer, and see how long it takes and how much the CPU heats up. If you want your iPhone to heat up that much and stay that long on a task, then there you go.
 
davidhawkins123 said:
ok so i just to a video that was 1:38, and the file was a whoping 128mb !!!!!!!!

on my kodak 720p video camera it would be like 20mb

i think apple messed up or indeed forgot about file compression, i thought they were all about the .h37856y83 or whatever comprssion and how good it was
Click to expand...

Try recording 720p with any decent DSLR/digicam. 128MB for 1:38 minutes is small. I'd be hoping for a higher bit rate personally.


[edit]

Good quality 720p captures are around 10mb/sec. Obviously we shouldn't expect that for a camera phone, but 20MB/1 minute 38 seconds for your Kodak camera is around 210 kBs/sec. That would look awful on any reasonably sized screen (though would look adequate on a low resolution handheld device). Thankfully Apple are thinking bigger than this :).
 
davidhawkins123 said:
all i'm saying is that i dont think the video is being compressed enough, i really think apple should work on this but without losing the quality
Click to expand...

Oh....really...? Want to explain how that works? Anyway, 10MB/S is a pretty good baseline for good quality video, hell, I remember watching 35MB episodes of the Simpsons when I was in college, it looked terrible.
 
I am with the original poster, the vids are HUGE. So what if we got the 16GB, it was not advertised that the videos AND pics were going to take up so much space on the phone!! If it was we prob would have opted for the 32GB. I think it would be nice to have an option of photo quality, you know good/better/best?? :apple:
 
Why the hell is there always something that needs to be complained about when nothing is wrong with the way it is now? :confused:

a1sexemama said:
I am with the original poster, the vids are HUGE. So what if we got the 16GB, it was not advertised that the videos AND pics were going to take up so much space on the phone!! If it was we prob would have opted for the 32GB. I think it would be nice to have an option of photo quality, you know good/better/best?? :apple:
Click to expand...

I use the 16gb because I never take movies on the go with me. I stream them. But I have a lot of photos and video that I have shot on the phone. It will hold a lot of video. A lot.
 
Drag'nGT said:
Why the hell is there always something that needs to be complained about when nothing is wrong with the way it is now? :confused:



I use the 16gb because I never take movies on the go with me. I stream them. But I have a lot of photos and video that I have shot on the phone. It will hold a lot of video. A lot.
Click to expand...

Agreed! I have 252 photos on mine, as well as an additional 71 in the camera roll. As well as having 13 videos that are all over a minutes in length, one being over 5 minutes. Not to mention my music and apps and I still have slightly over 11gb. Don't forget that the 16gb iphone 4 really only has 14gb of space available. So, from my personal experience I don't think its that bad!
 
1000gb hard drives are like $80 bucks and there are hundreds of free video re-encoding softwaer

why would you EVER want to start off with crappier quality


"Dear Ferrari, your car is too fast, please make it slower so that I can..."
 
I believe a lot of people are mixing up kbps, mbps, KB/sec and MB/sec.

The first indicates bits, which there are 8 of for every byte and the latter indicated bytes.

For example does all the Canon dSLRs record at 48Mbit/sec, which roughly translates into 6MB/sec.

RED One with the newest firmware can record at up to 42 MB/s (336 megabit/s).

Both are still heavily compressed, compared to what the RAW footage would take up of space.
 
I am ALSO with the original poster, the vids are STUPIDLY HUGE!
It's like having a pocket camera stuck on RAW format!
This is the reason why I have been looking for this very post and registered as a macRumors member just now to state my very disagreement.
I totally disagree with the geeky conservative adoration of whatever Steve' staff had decided. In this case the "file size versus VISIBLE quality" ratio is totally non-smart, sorry!
Let's be pragmatic, the Iphone is NOT a 35 mm movie camera. It should allow you to capture moments and share them easily. the type of video you would rather just upload on FB, NOT edit on a AVID video station...
And have you tried a FB upload of a 3' iPhone video (300mb) through average DSL bandwith? IT TURNS OUT TO BECOME A COMPUTATIONAL PROJECT, and it shouldn't.

Don't be naive, the choice for little compression and big file size is here a strategy to educate users in luring for the bigger storage capacity option, and accelerate the obsolescence of their device. period

Use Video Converter on the app store (1$), and (blind)test the quality difference on your mother. This is science.

I just hope a jailbreak patch could tweak the recording compression at start, and will continue looking for it.

When shooting for my next Microcosmos indie movie, I'll consider switching the patch off temporarily.
 
SYNC if off if you don't want it on there, but I'm with the masses on this one.

I've got two kids, and use it to record hilarious moments all the time. I'd rather take a large higher quality file to push to my 52" LCD than a more compressed one that saves me file size.

Sync it to your computer/mac if you don't want it to take space after you've downloaded it. I'd much rather have the higher quality initial file, and choose post if I want to compress it further through a computer program (or upload to a hosting service).
 
It's true, the videos really are "under" compressed. They use h264 which is as good as it gets, and it's true that more compression usually means lower quality, but it's slightly more complicated than that.

There are several 'profiles' in h264, with different profiles giving different amounts of compression for the same quality. Apple use quite a low profile, meaning the files end up big. Other camera phones use a higher profile, meaning they get similar quality in a smaller file. So yes, the OP is pretty much correct.

The only real question is why apple went with the lower profile? Could be battery life (higher profiles need more work, so it might have a hit) or it could be compatibility (not everything plays files recorded in the higher profiles - and quicktime used to be pretty bad for this, not sure if it still is).
 
Nicofirk said:
I am ALSO with the original poster, the vids are STUPIDLY HUGE!
It's like having a pocket camera stuck on RAW format.
Click to expand...

If the OP's 90 second video had actually been like a RAW format then it would have been about 15 GB instead of 128 MB.

You can't come to a board for computer enthusiasts and tell us that 128 MB is "like" 15 GB. No one here will believe that.

Furthermore, the fact that Apple can squeeze 15 GB into 128 MB and still have it look good SHOULD seem amazing to people. But apparently some folks want super-duper magic instead of regular old magic.
 
Small White Car said:
But apparently some folks want super-duper magic instead of regular old magic.
Click to expand...

You can hardly blame them when the competition are selling phones with super-duper magic, and don't have to wait nearly as long for their video to send :)

Apple had to increase file size to keep video quality because they chose to go with lower profile video encoding. They probably did that for very good reasons (maybe we need a battery life comparison between the 4s and latest android phones while recording 1080p?)
 
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