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So let's try this again. With your chosen clip open in QuickTime Player, head for the Export panel, this time selecting the Movie to MPEG-4 option. From here, you can export out to whatever part of the iPod video spec you want to target. The settings may seem a little arcane, but if you just use the following screen captures as your guide, you should be A-OK. First up, let's take a gander at some settings for a plain ol' MPEG-4 video (fig. 2):
Figure 2: Sample settings for MPEG-4 video
Remember, you have a lot more leeway with MPEG-4 video than you have with H.264, so go as nuts as you want with the data rate (up to 2.5 mbps) and the frame size (up to 480x480). Now, there are three things that you'll want to pay attention to:
- Up at the top, make sure MP4 is selected as the File Format,
- the Video Format needs to be set to MPEG-4 Basic, and
- the Audio Format must be AAC-LC.
If you do those three things, and keep within the data rate and frame size limits, you'll be fine. Now, what about H.264? Just a few tweaks of the same panel are all you need (fig. 3):
Figure 3: Sample settings for H.264 video
The Audio settings are the same as in Figure 2, so I left those out. Here are the areas to watch out for when encoding to H.264:
- The Video Format needs to be H.264 (obvious, I know), and
- you need to click the Video Options button and set the Restrict Profile(s) boxes to Baseline only.
Now, you don't have as high a data rate (up to 768 kbps) or frame size (up to 320x240) to work with as you do when encoding to regular MPEG-4, so keep that in mind. Anyway, that's pretty much it. QuickTime Pro makes converting video to the iPod format very simple. BUT...
What if you need to convert a common video type, such as DIVX or even plain MPEG-1, that QuickTime Pro can't export properly (or even, by default, open at all)? You may need to look for alternate programs that are a little more flexible in terms of what formats they can deal with. Programs that export specifically to iPod format are popping up all over the place, but since I'm a big fan of the freebies, that's what we'll stick to.
Mac options
Two freeware programs on the Mac are worth mentioning. The first, MPEG Streamclip, is one I've already taken a shine to in an earlier article, and is proving itself yet again as a multi-purpose encoding utility. First of all, it will handle just about any format you throw at it (QuickTime, DIVX, MPEG-1, and even WMV with the Flip4Mac components), and if you have the $20 Apple MPEG-2 Playback component installed, you can even convert unencrypted MPEG-2 and VOB files found on DVDs. Second, it's been recently updated (to version 1.51, to be exact) to add a really simple iPod video conversion button. Just open your clip, select Convert to MPEG-4 from the File menu, click the iPod button (fig. 4), and you're set.
Figure 4
All the tweakable settings are also right there, so if you're not happy with the defaults, just fill in the various fields with the settings we've been getting familiar with. Some of the extras are really nice too, especially the ability to deinterlace footage and to crop the edges of the frame, which comes in handy if you have clips that come from a PVR (for example) which may have garbage edges.
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