Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
neonart said:
Not sure it's a restriction. Probably more a limitation of the iPod. MPEG4 looks really good at the right settings. Just because h.264 is a newer format does not mean MPEG4 is not good. Just like AAC and MP3.

Here's a MPEG4, iPod ready sample:


I thought the advantage with h.264 was that it was scalable without much quality loss. What is that size of that movie btw?
 
mashinhead said:
I thought the advantage with h.264 was that it was scalable without much quality loss. What is that size of that movie btw?

Scaleable doesn't mean a movie you rip at 320x176 will look good displayed at 720x400. It means that a movie you rip at 320x176 will look as good as a movie you rip at 720x400 when viewed on screens at their appropriate resolutions.

H.264 is scaleable in that it works just as well for 3G phone videos as it does for 1080x1920 HD video.
 
mashinhead said:
I thought the advantage with h.264 was that it was scalable without much quality loss. What is that size of that movie btw?

When you scale down, but not when you go up. It can't make pixels. Once you go from 320x240 to a TV it'll look really blurry and washed out.

That movie at almost two hours and 640x336 is 929MB. On the other hand, Tomb Raider 2, also two hours long but 640x272 is 754MB. Lemony Snicket, which is 640x336 and 1:47 is 680MB- but I used a slightly lower bitrate.

mashinhead said:
when ripping video, how do bitrate and sample rate effect the turnout in size and quality

Obviously, higher rates mean higher quality. But it comes to a point when the movie gets too big, so you need to find a sweet spot. The default 1000kbps is a really good average I've found. Doing 2-pass encoding is very important since it keeps the quality up at a lower bitrate (but takes longer).
 
I'm going to be posting an update to these instructions, possibly later today, to reflect that H.264 encoding is now available as an option that will work with iPod Gen5... I've ripped over 20 movies so far without any problems whatsoever.

The new steps will be posted in post 1 of this thread.

EDIT: The new directions are in post 1.
 
clayj said:
I'm going to be posting an update to these instructions, possibly later today, to reflect that H.264 encoding is now available as an option that will work with iPod Gen5... I've ripped over 20 movies so far without any problems whatsoever.

The new steps will be posted in post 1 of this thread.

EDIT: The new directions are in post 1.
Clayj, any thoughts on easily adding chapters to iPod DVDs, sometimes I don't want to watch the whole thing ya know.???
 
wattage said:
Clayj, any thoughts on easily adding chapters to iPod DVDs, sometimes I don't want to watch the whole thing ya know.???
If you just want to rip a single chapter or a contiguous sequence of chapters (say, chapters 7 through 12, inclusive), use the Chapters controls in the Source section of Handbrake to change which chapter(s) will be ripped. The only limitation of this is that you cannot rip a non-contiguous selection in a single action; if you want chapters 7, 9, and 12 converted for use on your iPod, you will have to perform THREE conversions, one for each chapter (7 to 7; 9 to 9; and 12 to 12). Oh, and you'd have to use different file names for each chapter or chunk of chapters, obviously.

Beyond that, everything else would be exactly the same.
 
Perhaps apple will add a feature where the ipod could recognize chapter markers made in quicktime. This would be VERY nice. They could also make it allot easier to actually make the chapter markers in quicktime while they are at it. As of now you need to write a script and import it into quicktime. Wouldnt it just be easier to add a function where you hit a button at the point you'd like the chapter to be and it would be save as metadata? :confused: Sorry for the drift from topic.
 
freeny said:
Perhaps apple will add a feature where the ipod could recognize chapter markers made in quicktime. This would be VERY nice. They could also make it allot easier to actually make the chapter markers in quicktime while they are at it. As of now you need to write a script and import it into quicktime. Wouldnt it just be easier to add a function where you hit a button at the point you'd like the chapter to be and it would be save as metadata? :confused: Sorry for the drift from topic.
I agree, it would be nice to be able to chapter forward/chapter back while watching a feature-length movie.
 
Is there a way to make video playlists, because in that case, QT Pro makes short work of splitting a movie into smaller ones. select, copy, paste. You could just make a playlist for the movie and play it all the way through, or watch some chapters, etc. In the process of deleting some sketches, I split a best of SNL DVD into 4 files, each 15 mins (this works better for this particular DVD because I would want to skip around so much).
 
ibilly said:
Is there a way to make video playlists, because in that case, QT Pro makes short work of splitting a movie into smaller ones. select, copy, paste. You could just make a playlist for the movie and play it all the way through, or watch some chapters, etc. In the process of deleting some sketches, I split a best of SNL DVD into 4 files, each 15 mins (this works better for this particular DVD because I would want to skip around so much).
Well, "Video Playlists" is listed in the Video section of my iPod, so I'd say the answer is yes.

But until a simple method becomes available for ripping all "n" chapters of a movie (where "n" is an appreciably-high number) into sequentially-named video files, I will be passing on this.
 
clayj said:
Well, "Video Playlists" is listed in the Video section of my iPod, so I'd say the answer is yes.

But until a simple method becomes available for ripping all "n" chapters of a movie (where "n" is an appreciably-high number) into sequentially-named video files, I will be passing on this.

Oh, c'mon. You know that you want 30-60 files a movie! It'd be fun to manage all of the chapters!
 
just a quick question that i'm sure somebody's answered but i can't find it:

why is h.264 better for ipod-only playback? is it size of file? quality on ipod screen? better quality, everything else aside? what is it?
 
asherman13 said:
just a quick question that i'm sure somebody's answered but i can't find it:

why is h.264 better for ipod-only playback? is it size of file? quality on ipod screen? better quality, everything else aside? what is it?
It has better video compression than MPEG-4 using the same settings (resolution, video bitrate), so you get smaller files (important for conserving your iPod's HD space). I can't back this up with scientific evidence, but the H.264 video seems clearer to me, too.

BUT, encoding H.264 takes longer than MPEG-4 (twice as long on average in my experience). And H.264 sucks for TV playback since the resolution is so low (320 x 240 max).
 
clayj said:
It has better video compression than MPEG-4 using the same settings (resolution, video bitrate), so you get smaller files (important for conserving your iPod's HD space). I can't back this up with scientific evidence, but the H.264 video seems clearer to me, too.

BUT, encoding H.264 takes longer than MPEG-4 (twice as long on average in my experience). And H.264 sucks for TV playback since the resolution is so low (320 x 240 max).

ok....i know this is kinda personalized, but i'm looking for about 1hour = 100mb...does that sound good? and what settings would i use for it?

don't reply if you think it's too personalized, but i would appreciate it...
 
asherman13 said:
ok....i know this is kinda personalized, but i'm looking for about 1hour = 100mb...does that sound good? and what settings would i use for it?

don't reply if you think it's too personalized, but i would appreciate it...
1 hour = 100 mb... hmm... at a guess, I'd say H.264, average video bitrate 400, audio 44000/160.

But if you look closely, you'll see that Handbrake offers a "Target size (MB)" option in the Video section. For a two-hour movie, try setting the target size value to 200 MB, and then do a rip and see what it does. I've not really been concerned too much about video sizes, but here are some sample numbers using my preferred values (from post #1):

The Island = 800 MB
Blade Runner = 688 MB
Sin City = 740 MB
Fight Club = 815 MB
THX 1138 = 516 MB
Black Hawk Down = 844 MB

Hope this helps!
 
Clayj,

Have you tried DiVa for this yet?

I have that application on both my iBook and Powermacs at home. It supports encoding in H.264 natively and should be able to drop down to the correct encoding, and sizes.

I am going to try to give it a shot (tonight), unless you know of an issue with this, or have tried and failed doing so yourself. Please let me know your thoughts on this.
 
840quadra said:
Clayj,

Have you tried DiVa for this yet?

I have that application on both my iBook and Powermacs at home. It supports encoding in H.264 natively and should be able to drop down to the correct encoding, and sizes.

I am going to try to give it a shot (tonight), unless you know of an issue with this, or have tried and failed doing so yourself. Please let me know your thoughts on this.
Where do you get DiVa from? (I know, I could Google for it, but "Diva" is a common word.)
 
I got the idea from this site

http://home.comcast.net/~appleguru/dvdrip.html

The link is in the directions, but here is the direct link.

http://diva.3ivx.com/

I have been using this software for about a year now, and really like it. I usually just compress using the 3iVx encoder to about 300mb file (depending on the movie) to watch on my ibook, or my work laptop. Now that I have a 5G ipod, I would like to use it to compress my ripped DVD files directly to the ipod supported format if possible.
 
clayj said:
It has better video compression than MPEG-4 using the same settings (resolution, video bitrate), so you get smaller files (important for conserving your iPod's HD space). I can't back this up with scientific evidence, but the H.264 video seems clearer to me, too.
i used the new steps today and i don't really notice a difference.... :eek: :confused:
 
Handbrake Lite experience....

I did and I wouldn't recommend it. Tried it last night and it basically froze up at 100% and I ended up having to force quit it. Shut my computer down and when I turned it back on this morning there were serious problems...I couldn't print or burn discs and when I tried to re-install my printer softwear and my admin passwork wasn't recognized I really started to freak. My husband knows unix and suggested that the startup disc might be full. I ended up having to use disc utility to do a repair (the first time in over 20 years using Mac that I've ever had to do that!) and thank goodness it worked.

Decided today to try Clay's version using Mac the Ripper and Handbrake and it worked fine! I used the M-peg 4 video version and followed the instructions - it was very easy. I won't have my iPod Video for a few days but I imported it into iTunes and it plays fine (Firefly disc 1 :)

Sheri


Originally Posted by emutree
A FANTASTIC and just-released app for DVD-to-iPod rips is Handbrake Lite by the guy who makes iSquint. You don't have to (or get to) fiddle with any options - just put your DVD in, pick the title and hit rip. It crops it to 320x240 if it's widescreen, and rips to (great quality) MPEG 4. I've found it rips forty-five minute shows in about half an hour, and I've gotten half hour sitcoms in about twenty minutes. Definitely worth using.
Download from http://www.isquint.org/.

puckhead193 said:
anyone else tried this?
 
JW008 said:
Thanks for your help, clayj, but it's still not working. The only two titles (in Pulp Fiction for example) are previews for other movies (the longest being 1 min 13 sec). I tried doing the Main Feature extraction through MtR, but it doesn't recognize it in Handbrake. (e.g. At the "Select a DVD:" screen I go down to DVD Folder / Image and select the extraction, but it doesn't recognize it) I guess no Pulp Fiction for me....:(
pulp fiction, both with and without main feature extraction in MTR didn't work for me either. DVD player, on the other hand, likes both of them.
 
I assume you guys are all using Macs with your iPods?

How can I rip a dvd to my ipod on a pc. Is there an easy way or is it going to be very complicated and take ages?
 
IJC said:
I assume you guys are all using Macs with your iPods?

How can I rip a dvd to my ipod on a pc. Is there an easy way or is it going to be very complicated and take ages?

yep, most of us are using mac's. i've heard videora, psp video 9, and a couple others can do it.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.