Filed under: iPod Family, Video, Tips and tricks
Good compression settings for iPod videos
I've
been tinkering with compression settings on videos, trying to find the best balance of size, quality, compression
settings and compatibility for my video-capable iPod ever since the beginning of November.
H.264 is very nice and cool, but it takes forever and a day to compress using QuickTime Pro's export to iPod option.
Since I'm not really interested in projecting my videos in large on the wall via an HD-capable projector, there's no
need to pick it over MPEG-4. Also, I want to make sure that my videos, especially ones like the video podcasts we do
here at TUAW, are viewable by as many people as possible. So the best option is to wrap it in a .mov wrapper. That way,
anyone with QuickTime should be able to watch the file.So, in order to do this nicely, I first installed 3ivx as the codec to use. I've been meaning to try the new Divx codec, but haven't had a chance yet. I open the file I want to convert in QuickTime Pro and choose Export to Movie and hit the Options button. This will bring up a Movie Settings panel like the one pictured with this post:
- Choose Settings... and pick the 3ivx D4 4.5.1 codec, set the quality to medium, the frame rate to 24 and bitrate to 400 kbits/sec.
- Then adjust the size. If you have a 740x480 video file, then shrink it down to 360x240.
- Set the sound to AAC 44.100 kHz Stereo at 160kbps.
- If you are hosting the file online, check the Prepare for Internet Streaming box and select Fast Start.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Evan Gaines said 10:07PM on 12-21-2005
whenever I have changed the frame rate from 29.97fps to 24, or 15 for that matter, it has always decreased the quality of movement--I wonder what the advantages were for using 24 over 29.97, and is the difference measurable enough to force the need for this change from its original broadcast format.
just a though.
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djones said 10:15PM on 12-21-2005
Some good tips overall, but worth noting:
there's no need to pick it [h.264] over MPEG-4
h.264 is not just for Hi-Def content. It is completely scalable, meaning that, versus the MPEG-4 codec, you can either get twice the quality at the same bitrate, or the same quality at half the bitrate. Depending on your choice, you either end up with better video, or a smaller file size. h.264 is worth the wait, but you have to re-center your concept of what a "good" bitrate is in order for the benefit to click. I'm not familiar with QT's preset for output to iPod--you'll want to just export a QT movie using the h.264 codec and assemble the details yourself. That's likely why you haven't seen any difference in size / quality.
You can save some more filesize by slackening up on your audio. 36kHz at 96kbps is more than enough to carry quality stereo audio, especially if you're coming from a video podcast, but this often holds true for tv shows and movies as well. Most video podcasts have the same audio requirements as a regular audio podcast, and as such, can get away with even MUCH less. 32kbps at 22.05kHz, for example. Now you've decreased your filesize and bandwidth requirements further, or alternately, made room within your bandwidth budget to increase the quality of your video.
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djones said 10:21PM on 12-21-2005
-I wonder what the advantages were for using 24 over 29.97
If your source material is 29.97, there is no advantage. The 29.97 source is interlaced, and does not convert well to 24p without the use of better tools than Quicktime has. And if you're setting the bitrate--changing the framerate isn't going to save you any on filesize, especially to 15. The bitrate dictates the filesize. It's just going to use more bits per i-frame and subframe, in theory giving you more detailed frames--but only if you were wise enough to add the Deinterlace filter, and you'll have more detail, but still have poor motion.
Sticking to the source media's framerate is almost always the right choice.
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Steve Covello said 11:53PM on 12-21-2005
Excellent options available from freeware app MPEG Streamclip. Saves presets, does batch rendering, well-thought out dialog [asks for destination BEFORE creating batch list -- shmart!]. Does many things. Better than Podner, or QTPRo, IMO.
http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html
weevie833
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C.K. Sample, III said 8:36AM on 12-22-2005
The h.264 vs. MPEG4 was for two reasons: 1. faster to encode. 2. I could actually set the size to something wider than 320x240 (which is the h.264 cap on the iPod).
The 24-29 frames differential... I haven't noticed any difference between the two.
As for the audio, yes, I guess I could lower that a bit, but I just am hesitant to go to a low where it is noticeable and have to spend all that time re-encoding.
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djones said 9:20AM on 12-22-2005
You can set the h.264 size as wide as I want. As I mentioned, I think the problems you have had with h.264, including encoding times, may be due to using the Export to iPod preset, instead of just a Save As... or Export to Quicktime. From there, you can select all things video, and all things audio, very similarly to what you're doing with the 3ivx dialog.
Believe me, I know the headaches of waiting hours and doing tons of testing to find the results I want, wasting tons of encodes. Here's what I've found to be the secret: save out a 10-15 second segment from the final video, and test encode on that snippet to your heart's delight. If you are just too frustrated from days of dealing with this and ready to give in after finding your (quite acceptable) method, take a cue from Apple and at least drop your audio down to 128kbps. I promise, unless you are encoding 5.1 surround with discrete audio information to all 6 speakers (which needs about 450kbps) only dogs could tell the difference. ;)
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djones said 9:22AM on 12-22-2005
You can set the h.264 size as wide as I want.
Or as wide as you want, heh.
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Alan Strangis said 1:33PM on 12-22-2005
An aquaintance of mine came up with this for the sake of cross-platform compatibility...
http://www.dougplanet.com/2005/12/almost-universal-video-codec.html
I've tested it and it works great and pretty much everywhere, from PSPs to iPods, Palms and PCs.
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WWWhatsup said 4:00PM on 12-22-2005
An important thing to remeber about encoding h.264 for the iPod is that you must use baseline encoding only. This involves clicking off 'mainline' as well as clicking on 'baseline' in the options in QT7. I myself use 480kbps h.264 on the video and 128kbps AAC on the audio. It's true encoding takes forever, but the results are worth it.
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Adam G said 6:12PM on 12-22-2005
well i use the program smart ripper to decode a dvd to a vts format that is perfect dvd quality then squeeeeeeeeze a 8 gig file into a 800meg file using videora
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Mike said 9:02PM on 12-22-2005
I have some video files that only play with VLC. QT7 pro can't play them (displays "movie contains some invalid data" -2010).
How can I convert them if QT7 won't open them?
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Mason Galindo said 1:56AM on 12-25-2005
First let me begin by thanking you for the very useful and easy to understand guide to compressing movies for the iPod. I've struggled with Videora and other conversion applications and this is seems to be the easiest way to go about doing it. Djones seems to have contributed a lot of useful information but seeing as I'm a beginner to all of this, I'm not able to interpret it and put it to good use.
I'll be using QuickTime Pro 7 to export my videos into an iPod ready state. Which codec should I use to achieve the best quality? I installed the 3ivx D4 4.5.1 codec and the quality seems acceptable but if I can have superior quality without considerably increasing file size then I'll take it!
Also, when adjusting the size of a video, how far are you supposed to bring it down? It seems to me you just sliced the resoltuion of your original video inhalf. Is this basically what we should do everytime? Simply divide the original resolution by two? If I have a final resolution after exporting a video from QTPro that exceeds the maximum resoltuion supported by the iPod, will the iPod size the video as necessary? In the compressor options there are several different choices for the 'encoder mode'. Should I leave this alone? Does this have any effect on the quality of the movie? Where do I adjust the movie's bitrate at? Is bitrate the same as datarate?
Lastly, what should my target bitrate be for my AAC Encoder settings? Djones mentioned that slacking up on the audio will decrease the filesize without creating a noticable decrease in quality. What bitrate should I bring it down to? About 128kbps?
Wow.. sorry for all of the questions. Hope it wasn't too much!
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David said 2:15PM on 12-25-2005
I found that Handbrake worked very well for converting videos, so if you can open the content there it's fairly fast compared to the quicktime pro encoder.
The settings I used were the following:
Codecs: H.264 Video/AAC Audio
Framerate: Same as source
Encoder: Baseline
Quality: 750kbps (or lower)
Picture Settings: Change the resolution to 320x240 (or whatever smaller than 240 if it's wide screen) - 320x240 is the max resolution, if it's larger I'm not sure what the iPod does but it will certainly affect battery life if it plays at all.
1 pass encoding (change to 2 pass if you want better quality, but much slower encoding).
Change the audio settings if you want, I just left them at 128kbps.
I got about an hour and a half or so down to around 250MB and it played really well on the computer, we'll see how it does on the iPod. On a dual G5 2.0 it encoded in around 15-20 minutes! I think a lot of it had to do with the 1 pass encoding, so if you see that option in any encoding program enable it, or disable 2 pass encoding.
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Anthony808 said 8:00PM on 12-30-2005
The only problem with a 3ivx encode in a .mov wrapper is the lack of metadata support. I wanted to use AtomicParsley to set tags in my video for use on the iPod. As far as I can tell, this only works on mpeg4 files.
I found that I can use the described compression settings above, then bring the .mov back into Quicktime and re-export it to mpeg4 to wrap it in an mp4 container. I set the audio and video to pass-through so there will be no transcode. Then I can edit the mp4 file in AtomicParsley and add my tags.
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Andrew Z said 9:35AM on 1-05-2006
I have a problem with the new Quicktime 7.0. When i learned that i needed it to export the video files i have to ipod format, i did not really mind to much buying the entire program. Now the only problem i have with the quicktime is that when i play the videos on my ipod there is no audio. I looked up the problem on apple.com and it said that it could not do audio files that are "MPEG MUXED", i have no idea what that means or how to solve it. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to export my videos without losing the audio?
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Paul Mumford said 5:13AM on 1-18-2006
Hey Andrew Z, download and install FFMPEGX, drop the video in this and select your chosen output, then open the resulting file in Quicktime, export for Ipod and hey presto!, vid with sound. Put on headphones, watch video, tap foot in time to the music and wonder whether all this personal entertainment is alienating us all!
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