Getting Video into the iPod Video

Tutorial: Page (1) of 3 - 12/12/05

Here comes the science

Well, what passes for science on these pages, anyway. Theoretically, there's no magic to transcoding video for the iPod, since Apple is quite forthcoming about the video specs of the new iPods. In a nutshell, you can encode to MPEG-4 video or to Apple's flavor du jour, the snappily named H.264. Here's a quick rundown of the maximum settings for either one:

H.264

File formats: .m4v, .mp4 or .mov
Video data rate: 768 Kbps
Profile: Baseline
Frame size: 320 x 240
Frame rate: 30 frames per sec.
Audio data rate: 160 Kbps
Audio sample rate: 48 Khz stereo

MPEG-4

File formats: .m4v, .mp4 or .mov
Video data rate: 2.5 mbps
Profile: Simple
Frame size: 480 x 480
Frame rate: 30 frames per sec.
Audio format: AAC-LC
Audio data rate: 160 Kbps
Audio sample rate: 48 Khz stereo

Again, those numbers represent the maximum, so you can certainly scale down as desired and the iPod will still play back the clip happily. Now, with those requirements, just about any program capable of compressing to either straight MPEG-4 or the slightly fancier H.264 format should be able to do the job.

MPEG-4 v. H.264

We're at the point now where a fundamental question presents itself: which codec is better? The answer is an unambiguous one: it depends. If you want to retain higher data and frame rates (which should help when you route the iPod's video signal through a TV), use MPEG-4. H.264 does very well at lower data rates, however, so it's a great choice if you need smaller files with pretty good image quality. The other trade-off is speed: H.264 takes eons to encode, while MPEG-4 is significantly faster. So if you have a lot of clips to burn through, MPEG-4 may be a better choice.

Now that we have that settled (more or less), it's worth mentioning that some encoding programs can be tripped up on a technicality, such as only supporting the H.264 Main Profile instead of the Baseline Profile the iPod requires. So let's look at a few programs that can fill the bill and produce iPod-capable clips. I'm going to start with Apple's own QuickTime Pro to show you the ropes, but then we'll move on to a couple of freebies that will handle a wider range of input formats.

QuickTime Pro

First, the downside: QuickTime Pro is $30. Making the requisite mental leap, which I am sometimes capable of, that means it ain't free. But there are probably more than a handful of you out there that have gone Pro for your QuickTime needs, and if you have, you already have a major, cross-platform, and (most importantly) simple tool for converting video for the iPod. It's also a nice, simple way to illustrate the settings you'll need to look for regardless of the program you ultimately choose to do the heavy lifting.

So fire up the QuickTime Player, open up your movie clip of choice, and select File:Export from the menu. The easiest thing to do is to simply select the Movie to iPod option (fig. 1).

Figure 1

What you get out of that is a 320x240 H.264-based clip, ready to go, so you can simply stop reading right here. If your clip can be opened in the QuickTime Player, and you want the easiest path possible, that's all you have to do. It's so simple you're not even allowed to dig into the Options box (it's grayed out and unclickable). However, if you want a little more flexibility (like being able to set the data rate, control the video codec, or scale the clip differently for widescreen aspect ratios, etc.), you'll need to fiddle with the settings a bit.

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