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iPod touch Touch play videos from default settings in handbrake

C

cmonster

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 23, 2007
37
0
I have encoded dozens of videos in handbrake, pretty much all the default settings (h.264)and around 1500-2000kps. Files sizes come to about 1.5gigs on average. Looking at the ipod touch specs I am unsure if it will play these. I am afraid I don't know that much about this things. I didn't see any other post about this. Does any one know? Here are the specs from the apple site.

"H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats"
 
Are you encoding strictly to play on the Touch? If so, there is a iPhone preset that sets resolution to 480 x 320, and reduces the bitrate.

Actually, for 480 x 320 H.264, a video bitrate of just 500 kbps will deliver very nice looking video. I don't think it's worth going significantly higher in bitrate or resolution for the Touch, since you want to maximize your storage space.

I took the iPhone preset, changed video bitrate to 500 kbps, and saved that as my new default preset.
 
madmaxmedia said:
Are you encoding strictly to play on the Touch? If so, there is a iPhone preset that sets resolution to 480 x 320, and reduces the bitrate.

Actually, for 480 x 320 H.264, a video bitrate of just 500 kbps will deliver very nice looking video. I don't think it's worth going significantly higher in bitrate or resolution for the Touch, since you want to maximize your storage space.

I took the iPhone preset, changed video bitrate to 500 kbps, and saved that as my new default preset.
Click to expand...


My bad I should have said this before. I have been doing it to use them with my Appletv. I really don't want to encode them again and have two copies of each movie in my library.
 
I have the same question.

If I have encoded dvds using the handbrake default for Apple TV do I need to encode/ convert all of these again to watch on an ipod touch ?

If I do have to re-encode I will have two versions of all films within itunes which is going to look pretty stupid when viewed within itunes, apple tv or front row. Is there any plugins that will allow multiple versions of a film to exist under each title in itunes, and when it is needed by an app the appropriate version is used ?
 
ebony said:
I have the same question.

If I have encoded dvds using the handbrake default for Apple TV do I need to encode/ convert all of these again to watch on an ipod touch ?

If I do have to re-encode I will have two versions of all films within itunes which is going to look pretty stupid when viewed within itunes, apple tv or front row. Is there any plugins that will allow multiple versions of a film to exist under each title in itunes, and when it is needed by an app the appropriate version is used ?
Click to expand...


I knew I couldn't be the only one with this question. Seems like such a waste to re-encode everything again. Then seeing two things on apple tv. As long as my same files that play on apple tv play on the touch I am happy. Even if it is over kill on quality and file size.
 
*kicks self for reviving an old thread*

I searched the forums and this is the closest thread I found that addresses my problem and I'm hoping there's someone out there not completely distracted by the new iPhone rollout that can help. :rolleyes:

I've been encoding all my TV shows and DVDs using Handbrake default settings for Apple TV. As far as I can tell (without being on my Mac at the moment) this keeps the aspect ratio the same as the DVD and produces an .m4v file with chapter breaks. I set the file size to be 60% of the original in order to preserve a little space without a complete loss of quality. Anyways though, this all looks great on the Apple TV and I love that I now have chapter breaks (there's a whole new adventure in MetaX just waiting to happen [tagging chapters]), but I'm worried these won't play when I get my iPod touch.

So the question once and for all is...can .m4v files be played on the iPod touch? Would chapter marks show up at all? I'm not worried about their size taking up the space, so don't worry about "the file's too big and you won't be able to save a lot of movies". I don't want to rip everything to iPod format since the main locale will be my Apple TV, nor do I want to have to re-encode every single video I intend to transfer to the Touch. Suggestions anyone? Has anyone done this? Does anyone have the desire to be my hero and give it a try if you haven't?

I want to get the iPod Touch soon, but I'm really starting to worry that none of the videos I've spent months ripping, encoding, and tagging will be playable. :(
 
Chapter markers do show up on the iPod Touch, which is very nice.

The question for you is whether the resolution or bitrate of your videos is too high. Can you confirm those for us?

If no one knows for sure, I can try encoding a small chapter from some DVD in HandBrake as you've done, and see if it plays on my Touch.
 
madmaxmedia said:
Chapter markers do show up on the iPod Touch, which is very nice.

The question for you is whether the resolution or bitrate of your videos is too high. Can you confirm those for us?

If no one knows for sure, I can try encoding a small chapter from some DVD in HandBrake as you've done, and see if it plays on my Touch.
Click to expand...

I believe the resolution remains at the default, and the bitrate is somewhere around 1500. Since I limit it by percentage of original file size, I don't know the exact bitrate without going home and looking. If you were willing to do a sample, I'd be so appreciative. I'm just really worried all this work I've done will be worthless in regards to the iPod touch. :(
 
madmaxmedia said:
If you're at around 1500, then this thread seems to bode well for you-

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/365786/

I will do my best to do a sample encode, obviously a real confirmation is better. Feel free to shoot me an email or PM over the weekend if I haven't posted back.

-Steve
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for that thread. It really helped. I think I'll be okay, though I'm very interested to see how chapters work on the iPod touch. I'm so torn. I want to buy one now, but my mom might be buying a mac soon in which case she says I have the $300 iPod credit, but I also want to wait and see what happens after the back-to-school special is over in case there's some big change. I'm torn.
 
I should be able to test in a bit, but 1 major gotcha is probably going to be the default resolution in HandBrake for ATV. There's a good chance it will exceed the max resolution of iPod Touch videos, but we'll see.

The aspect ratio might also be important, really widescreen (2.35:1) might have a better chance of working because total pixels will be less than say 4:3.

I imagine they will come out with a revised version in September, if you can wait for that. Probably a increase in capacity, so $299 for 16GB along with some minor improvements.
 
Unfortunately it's a no go. I am pretty sure the resolution is the problem, the iPod Touch can display 640 x 480 or equivalent pixel number for other aspect ratios.

Handbrake encodes at a higher resolution than that for ATV...
 
madmaxmedia said:
Unfortunately it's a no go. I am pretty sure the resolution is the problem, the iPod Touch can display 640 x 480 or equivalent pixel number for other aspect ratios.

Handbrake encodes at a higher resolution than that for ATV...
Click to expand...

:(

However, looking at the settings in Handbrake for the Apple TV settings, it looks like while the source resolution is 720 x 480, the output is 640 x 480. If I'm reading that right, it should be producing a file a little smaller that would fit exactly in the iPod touch parameters. I've attached what it looks like on my end. Can you see if this is what yours shows as well?
 

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I just put a DVD in, and the input resolution is 720 x 480 but the output resolution is 702 x 378.

It's possible we have different versions of HandBrake, or perhaps one of us change the default settings for ATV.

Check the resolution of your videos. If they are all 640 x 480 or equivalent (in total pixels), then you may very well be okay. At the very least, hopefully most of your videos will play on your Touch.
 
I realized why it was different. When the file first opens it defaults to either the same resolution, or slightly smaller, just like yours did. However, when I decrease the quality to 60% and then choose the video from the dropdown at the top, it decreases it to an acceptable size normally. Sometimes it doesn't, so now I'm getting in the habit of adjusting the picture settings to lock the aspect ratio and then scale it down a bit. I'm a little bummed I didn't catch this before ripping some of my TV shows, but as long as I know from now on I should be okay. And who knows? Maybe someday I'll have the patience to redo the ones I did that aren't acceptable for iPod touch. Or even better, they'll be playable on a future version! Thanks for all your help.
 
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