iPod my ipod plays video at 720x400

[MacinJosh]

You guys all seem to know a little bit, and I am fairly computer literate, but some of this is new to me. I don't have a video iPod yet, won't get one till full-screens come out, but I recently got an Intel Mac and plan on getting a 24" iMac and iTV next spring. I am mainly ripping to put my DVD collection into my HDD for Front Row and FR via iTV, but also want the option of putting it on an iPod. I am trying to learn more about ripping DVDs and have used MTR and HB to run some tests on a few, and am trying to find out more about the settings to use. I see you guys are learning new stuff everyday as it is changing.

1. What is the real advantage of H.264 over MPEG-4?

2. Why use 2-pass encoding, it seems to take a lot longer? Is there that much quality difference?

3. I see that clayj's sticky isn't really updated as he still lists 230,400 as the max size, as well as some other stuff like max kbps. I want to rip at full res (source minus bars) and I am not that concerned about file size. A full movie comes out at 1.5-2.0 gigs. Should I use MPEG-4 at avg. 2000kbps Audio at 48000 and 160 as I have been? I haven't been using 2-pass. What is the real difference between that and H.264, that H.264 is smaller. Or should I just wait for HB to handle the LC-Baseline?

4. When you load a 720 or 704 x 3xx into an iPod does it crop or add the letterbox bars that don't show up in the QT window?

Thanks for helping educate me a little. I will definitely pass on my results as well.

1. H.264 has better compression/quality per bitrate than MPEG-4. In other words you can have either a better quality H.264 file at the same file size or a similar quality H.264 file at a smaller size

2. 2-pass determines which scenes in the movie need more bitrate and distributes it accordingly while still maintaining the average bitrate. For example 1500kbps would go to waste in the credits as it's just text in a black background. The first pass would see that it only needs about 500kbps and shoves the rest to a fast action scene. Overall there is a significant quality boost using 2-pass ( or VBR, variable bitrate) over constant bitrate.

3. Handbrake does not rip anything at DVD's full resolution. That's just to clear that out of the way. No, HB's 720x*** is not full. DVD’s native resolution is 720×480 (NTSC) and 720×576 (PAL). That’s a 4:3 aspect ratio but an anamorphic picture (squashed). When it’s displayed on a computer or widescreen TV, the picture is stretched to 16:9 and the resolution effectively becomes 856×480 (NTSC) or 1024×576 (PAL). If you have a movie like Monster’s Inc. at 1.85:1 the actual displayed (not native) DVD resolution is 856×480 vs your 720×400. You lose 80 lines of vertical resolution there.

Anyway, I would wait for HB to do 640x480 H.264. There is an early beta version around that seems to work fine. If filesize is not an issue, MPEG-4 offers best quality as it can go up to 2500kbps @ 720x400 (for 16:9 movies) and 720x304 (for 2.35:1 movies). H.264 @ 1500kbps does not come close there.

4. You can choose this in the settings. It will letterbox the movie or it will crop it. While cropping could be fine in a 16:9 movie, it will crop a 2.35:1 movie to fill the whole screen and you lose a lot of detail there. I find it unwatchable. Cropping is not panning and scanning so I never personally crop movies. I prefer the bars.

Joshua.