Slightly OT: Converting higher BW movies to iPhone

[gwerhart0800]

I have a bunch of movies ripped at 4000bps for my ATV via HandBrake. I have tried the iTunes method of converting them for the iPhone, but that takes forever on my 1.86Ghz C2D Mini. (I killed my first attempt when it ran all night and was only at the 1/2 way point.) I think I need to get them to ~1500bps to be compatible with the iPhone.

Is there a faster method?

 

[iann1982]

I never find these things fast, but VisualHub is quite a bit quicker in my experience. It costs about £12 but it's worth paying for the ease of use and speed.

 

[dynaflash]

Well, since you ripped them with HandBrake, just re-rip them for the iphone from the original dvd's, it will be at least as fast as re-encoding the already encoded files and the quality will be much better, its always best to encode from the source.

BTW: 4000 kbps bitrate for the atv is generally way too high from a dvd, even for the atv.

 

[cherbert]

Could someone please clarify the best Handbreak setttings to enable the encode to work on both ATV and iPhone at optimal quality?

 

[plinden]

I find that ripping using Handbrake's "iPod Hi-Rez" settings, modified with the resolution bumped up to 720 pixels wide (for widescreen - the max is usually 640 wide for 4:3 ratio video) and bitrate set to 2000 kps, it looks decent on a TV and computer and works on the iPhone, while keeping the size to about 750MB/hour of video.

1500 kps bitrate is generally acceptable, but animation with a lot of movement sometimes has artifacts.

By the way, Handbrake's CLI is about 2x faster at encoding than the GUI.

 

[dynaflash]

By the way, Handbrake's CLI is about 2x faster at encoding than the GUI.

Um, no. If you are seeing that with the exact same source and the *exact* same settings with the *exact* same programs running on your computer, I hate to tell you you have serious issues with your machine.

While it is true that the gui layer uses some resources to update its progress bar, etc. The difference should be almost impossible to detect. Especially cutting the speed in half. That doesn't make sense.

Everytime this has come up in the past, further inspection shows that some option was different between the encodes that caused the speed diff.

 

[gwerhart0800]

Well, since you ripped them with HandBrake, just re-rip them for the iphone from the original dvd's, it will be at least as fast as re-encoding the already encoded files and the quality will be much better, its always best to encode from the source.

BTW: 4000 kbps bitrate for the atv is generally way too high from a dvd, even for the atv.

I was originally ripping them at ~2000bps and that worked on both, but SWMBO claimed that the quality on the ATV was lacking. So, I redid everything at 4000bps to make her happy. I was hoping to avoid pulling all of the disks out yet again, if I could just down sample the 4000bps to 2000/1500bps when we wanted to stick something on an iPhone for a trip or other activity where a little pocket entertainment would be nice.

I would also like to avoid maintaining two copies of each movie ... if the down sampling were fast enough, it would be reasonable to keep only the high-res permanently.

If I have to go the handbrake method again, I will wait until I get my new 2.5Ghz MBP. It has to be faster than ripping on my Mini.

 

[gwerhart0800]

I never find these things fast, but VisualHub is quite a bit quicker in my experience. It costs about £12 but it's worth paying for the ease of use and speed.

I will check it out.

 

[dynaflash]

Its up to you. But you will likely find that even with VH it will take as long as using HB right from the dvd and the quality will be worse ( it always is when you re-encode an already encoded source). However, either method should achieve what you want.

 

[gwerhart0800]

Its up to you. But you will likely find that even with VH it will take as long as using HB right from the dvd and the quality will be worse ( it always is when you re-encode an already encoded source). However, either method should achieve what you want.

I guess the question is ... will the quality drop be detectable in an iPhone/touch? I will probably take the plunge and buy a copy of VH just to see. I am hopeful that VH will allow me to "queue" several files for conversion.

BTW, you mentioned that 4000bps was too high for DVD quality. My wife claims that 2000bps is too low. What do you recommend?

 

[cherbert]

I guess the question is ... will the quality drop be detectable in an iPhone/touch? I will probably take the plunge and buy a copy of VH just to see. I am hopeful that VH will allow me to "queue" several files for conversion.

BTW, you mentioned that 4000bps was too high for DVD quality. My wife claims that 2000bps is too low. What do you recommend?

I've been ripping mine at 2500 and 3000. So yeah I agree, 2000 is far too low.