Wednesday 25 September 2024
Font Size
   
Thursday, 21 October 2010 00:30

Encode Videos for Your iPad

Rate this item
(0 votes)

From Wired How-To Wiki

Ripping a DVD to your hard drive is easy -- check out our guide to ripping DVDs for more info.

Sadly, converting video to support the myriad of devices in our homes these days isn't simple. With every new device comes a new set of video options, screen resolutions, framerates and file types.

For example, while some of your older iPod-encoded movies will play just fine on your new iPad or iPhone 4, both devices support much higher-resolution video than their predecessors. If you want your videos to look better, you'll have to re-encode for the higher resolution screens.

Here's our guide to getting the most out videos on your iPad or iPhone 4.

This article is part of a wiki anyone can edit. If you have advice to add about using Handbrake, log in and contribute. Please read the How-To Wiki's guidelines on writing about media conversion software. Spam will not be tolerated. If you want to recommend a different free software solution, please start a new article.


The new specs

The iPad and iPhone 4 support 30fps H.264 video at a resolution of 1280 by 720 (720p).

Older versions of the iPhone and iPods supported 30fps H.264 video at 640 by 480, which means, if you want to support older devices you're either going to have stick with the older settings, or encode two separate copies of your movies.

Brave new HD video

Assuming you're embracing the new, you'll need to re-encode your movies to get the high quality video playback the iPad is capable of.

The free and open source HandBrake app is available for nearly every OS out there and can do an able job of encoding most kinds of video you encounter.

Starting from a ripped VIDEO_TS folder, an AVI file, a DivX file, an Mk4 or almost all of the other common formats, Handbrake can produce a high quality video file that will look great on the iPad and the iPhone 4.

The easy way

The simplest way to get video on your iPad using Handbrake is to use the app's Universal preset. This will turn 720p video into 705 by 400 pixels. That's a bit below what the iPad can handle, but it generally looks fine (with a few artifacts here and there) and is definitely the easiest way to go.

The advanced way

If you're willing to get your hands a little dirty to make better looking videos, start with either the Normal or High Profile presets. Then, depending on your source video, you may need to scale down the screen size. Make sure you set the picture options for the anamorphic menu are set to "loose" or "custom" and the width is 1024 or less.

The last thing to correct for is framerate -- if your source is greater than 30fps, you're going to have to lower it.

For more info on optimizing other settings see the Handbrake forums.


Using the iPad preset in the nightly build

If you're more of purist, well, get ready to dive into the intricacies of video encoding.

While there has been some effort in the Handbrake community to release an iPad optimized preset, for now, that's not an option unless you download the nightly build.

Keep in mind, nightly builds are unstable versions of the app, and they are only recommended for experienced users. Get the latest nightly build from Handbrake. You'll find the experimental iPad preset inside.

Letterboxing

You may notice that some of your movies play on the iPad with black bars at the top and bottom. This is the "letterbox" effect. It's only there because the filmmakers chose to shoot their movie in an aspect ratio that doesn't exactly match the shape of the iPad's screen.

Handbrake offers settings to crop the black bars, but you shouldn't fiddle with them. Cropping is destructive and irreversible. If you get it wrong, you'll have to start over, and if you switch devices at some point in the future, your old cropped videos will look squished.

Just double-tap the iPad or iPhone 4's screen when you're watching the movie and it will zoom in to fit. Either that, or just enjoy the movie as is. The black bars aren't distracting, and you get to see the whole picture.

Transferring

Once you've got a video file that the iPad can understand, all you need to do is add it to your iTunes Library. From there, drag it over to your iPad (or let it sync, depending on your management settings) where you can enjoy your new higher-res video.


This page was last modified 23:59, 20 October 2010 by bhanly. Based on work by howto_admin.

Authors: How-To Wiki

to know more click here

French (Fr)English (United Kingdom)

Parmi nos clients

mobileporn