A New Hope: 720x304 MPEG4 on the iPod

Just encoded SW on my ipod as well, and it feels like the aspect ratio at 720x306 is a bit too wide, and given the aspect ratio of the movie (2.35:1) it should look fine.

R, Put the pipe down man. There are two ways to export video to the TV from the iPod. One is to use the iPod AV cable that plugs into the top jack. Two is to use the universal dock that has S-Video out, which will give you a slightly better image. Read the review at Ars Technica, they took pictures of the TV for people like you.

R, why the heck would I lie about this? Sheesh.

Yeah I don't believe it. A pic of the iPod playing the video would have been nice or the out put to the T.V.

I'm using a program called forty two dvd vx plus. It is working fine and they just updated the program so that it can convert the ipod movies to 320, 480, 640, and 720 width and also determine what you want for the output size. It's pretty cool. Check it out.

I have put close to 30 DVD movies and Bittorrent (converted AVI files) episodes of Lost on my iPod. Handbrake sold me on the new iPod Video foor sure! Fullframe DVD's work best for maximum viewing, if you have a Widescreen version you can do a cop as well but it takes some tweaking. I encode in MPEG4, use Xvid as the encoder, set the bitrate to 400 and the screen resolution to the usual 320x240 and let it rip. My Dual 2.3 G5 can convert to a finished file in around 45 minutes. After that all you need to do is drag the file into your iTunes library, edit the id tags and go to Amazon and grab the DVD cover artwork and import. You end up with a great list of movies in iTunes and your ready for the next long road/airplane trip. Going to need an 80GB version soon! This thing really rocks!

Do the math: Max. iPod resolution: 480x480 = 230.400 pixels. Your encoding resolution: 720x304 = 218.880 pixels. No wonder why it's working fine.

Argh, this version of HB won't work for me either. Same problem as the standard 0.7.0-beta3. I click on the app and nothing happens. I can open the 0.6.2 version and get it going but it stops at 31% and does nothing. I'm running a G3 600 iBook so I realize that things are gonna be slow (it predicted 13hrs for a 1.5hr movie, I'm cool with that) but it shouldn't freeze. Advice? illintechnology@yahoo.com

dont have a new ipod. question though. has anyone tried encoding at ABOVE the spec listed and then manually placing the video file on their iPod? directories can be accessed via terminal or other ways. apparently the Broadcom chip supports much higher resolutions. just curious if maybe the spec Apple listed is due to file size/playback performance but maybe that is not an issue when you're doing video out. anyone able to try this?

You do know that this "special" version of Handbrake is only needed if you want to create H.264 video for the iPod, right? The official HB only does "main" profile which is not playable on the iPod. The specialized version is tweaked to use the "baseline" profile to create iPod playable H.264 video. The video that you made, with the specs listed, can be done with the official HB. H.264 video using 2-pass at 500-600 bit rate with 128kbps audio and 320 res. looks great on the iPod as well as on the TV.