Filed under: iPod Family, Hacks, iPhone
Convert movies and undercook eggs on the iPhone
The bad news is that the iPhone really does not run hot enough to cook an egg. Uncomfortably warm? Yes. Safe egg-cooking warm? No. The good news is that you can use an iPhone port of ffmpeg to convert videos from DivX and XVid to mp4.
iPhone hacker "core"'s latest version of ffmpeg will convert a wide range of video formats to iPhone-compatible formats.
If you decide to do this, be aware that it will take forever and run hot, and we still don't know how to change the clock rate to make it go faster. Make sure your iPhone is well ventilated and plugged into a power-source for the duration. Also run your conversion with nohup so that when the iPhone goes to sleep (because you know it will) it won't kill your conversion process like it did with mine.
So is there a point to converting videos on the relatively underpowered iPhone? Well, no, really there isn't. Sometimes it's just enough to know that you can.
Here's an example of the syntax:
ffmpeg -i AVI_DivX.avi -f mp4 test.mp4
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Adam said 11:14AM on 3-05-2008
Hey is there a reason why something like VLC can't be ported, that seems much more useful then something like this.
Reply
kevin said 12:58PM on 3-05-2008
I agree – why convert at all if we could get the iPhone to play divx, it would be fantastic. Something like Perian or VLC on the iPhone would be amazing.
EmmJaySee said 4:03PM on 3-05-2008
I 100% agree. When can we have native divx/xvid playback on the iPhone -- oh yeah, and allow it to send video/audio out to the apple universal dock just like the ipod videos does now.
Binja said 11:20AM on 3-05-2008
You want to talk about running hot? I tethered mine so I could surf the web on my laptop. It was shockingly fast on EDGE. I was surfing and downloading to my hearts content. but then I got a call and I picked up my phone. I stuck the skin between my thumb and forefinger right to the apple logo on the back(the metal one). While it did not do any permanent damage it certainly "left its mark". My buddy is an Apple hater and he saw my inflamed apple scarification and thought that my "fanboyism" had reached a new low. So careful everybody, unless you dig corporate branding, wear gloves if you use this.(I was not branded, but I dropped the phone very quickly)
Reply
DistortedLoop said 11:37AM on 3-05-2008
LOL, that would be cool, no pun intended - but a little apple logo burned into your palm. That's fanboyism at it's pinnacle.
matthew said 11:36AM on 3-05-2008
If you have to have your iPhone plugged in and it takes forever, that seems to mean you're going to not only be at a power source but be there for a long time. Wouldn't a laptop (or desktop for that matter) be a more practical option at that point?
Reply
jkuehn said 11:36AM on 3-05-2008
I prefer cooking my eggs on the bottom of my Macbook Pro. I start up Final Cut Studio or DVD Studio Pro, start some heavy duty rendering activity, flip the Macbook Pro over and scramble away!
Reply
DistortedLoop said 11:37AM on 3-05-2008
C'mon, some of the things they're trying to get the iPhone to do now are just silly.
BitTorrent on the thing was bad enough, but now we want to convert video on it; sheesh, that's just ridiculous.
Just because the thing is a "computer in your pocket" doesn't mean we should use it for everything a computer does.
Video conversion on my 3 Ghz Quad Core Mac Pro with 11gb ram takes a painfully long amount of time...I can't imagine how slow it will be on 412mhz processor like the iPhone.
Reply
symour said 11:56AM on 3-05-2008
OMG you should check out the installer. New app called MX Tube v 1.0 stable. First ever native youtube downloader for iphone and it works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thats all.
Reply
Adam said 12:26PM on 3-05-2008
I have tried it to and it's great but I have had it crash a few times already so they still have a few kinks to work out.
dizilbdog said 1:43PM on 3-05-2008
Just saying but Erica Sudan seems like she should be working for apple. She is mad iphone genius.
Reply
Martin Moeller said 2:35PM on 3-05-2008
The thing that would make sense here is, a Safari plugin *based on* ffmpeg (which is at the base of VLC, MPlayer, etc) to play back most other formats than what Apple supports by them selves.
That and a local filesystem plugin, but I think there is one of those around already? Hope I'll be able to jailbreak my 16 GB Touch soon...
Reply
Amm said 4:59PM on 3-05-2008
Very cool.
Reply
Rex said 1:40PM on 3-06-2008
Maybe this could be useful for converting VoiceNotes into different formats? And, once we can record video, converting it into more web-compatible formats... like FLV.
Reply