Encoding for A4 devices (iPad, iPhone 4, tv 2)

[zonomorph]

According to my calcumalations, the iPhone 4 should be able to handle up to 13 reference frames for 720x480 anamorphic DVD video. (18000/((480/16)*(720/16))=~13) Could anyone confirm that they have successfully played SD video with 13 reference frames and 16 B-frames on an iPhone 4? I would test this myself, but I won't get an iPhone until later this year, and I want to start encoding the most efficiently compressed files that will play on it ahead of time. (I know cranking refs up to 13 is well into diminishing returns territory, but I have a quad core pc, so what the hell.)

[jamiemlaw]

I can confirm that iPhone 4 can handle 13 reference frames and 16 B-frames on content with a storage resolution of 720x480 (I believe it's 11 reference frames for 720x576).

[sapperjohn]

I have a significant number of encodes in which I used a custom preset for my ATV1 and unfortunately exhibit the weightp=0 blocking issue. Not a major problem as they play fine through Boxee on my hacked ATV, however does the weightp=0 issue still manifest itself on the ATV 2, if it doesn't I'll upgrade.

thanks.

[TedJ]

The AppleTV 2 supports weighted p-frames and is overall far more powerful and accomplished than the first generation model.

[sapperjohn]

Great, thanks TedJ. I shall make the investment in an ATV2.

[n6mod]

Your source is only 720 wide. Upscaing before encoding would be stupid. HandBrake protects you from this kind of stupid.

Is there a way to override this protection? Like most forms of automatic protection ("You can't fix stupid") it's occasionally wrong.

I have a fair number of MPEG2 files that are encoded at 480x480 (4:3). Handbrake wants to encode these to 480x384, and I'd rather not throw away the resolution. I don't care if this takes the form of upscaling to 640x480, or transcoding to 480x480 with a funny aspect ratio, but downscaling to 480x384 is not the best solution.

The answer to this would apply to the 1440x1080 (16:9) files I have as well, though in the context of transcoding for A4 devices, scaling down to 1280x720 is fine.

[TedJ]

This is exactly what custom anamorphic is for... encode to 480x480, disable "keep aspect ratio" and set the display width to 640. Problem solved.

[n6mod]

This is exactly what custom anamorphic is for...

Thank you, that's exactly what I needed.

[kbutler84]

I apologize, as I'm sure this has been covered. I just hope I am asking this in the correct place. I will soon start ripping my bluray library (have been using HB for my DVDs for quite some time now). However what I would ideally like to do is this:

From a single bluray, I want to rip a copy and encode using either Apple TV 2 or High Profile Present to create a (an ideally) 2-4GB file to be streamed to my Apple TV 2. HOWEVER, I would also like to encode a second copy that I would want to be much smaller in size (ideally under 1GB) to be used to put on my iPhone4/iPad. In short, I want two copies of a movie - one focused mostly on quality and another focused mostly on size. I understand how to create the high quality HD encode, but what would be the best way to go about creating the smaller file sized encode from the Bluray source for my iPhone4/iPad?

[Deleted User 11865]

The High Profile preset won't work for the AppleTV 2. Use the AppleTV 2 preset.

For your iPhone/iPad, use the iPhone 4 or iPad preset and lower constant quality a bit until you're satisfied with the file size.

[kbutler84]

The High Profile preset won't work for the AppleTV 2. Use the AppleTV 2 preset.

For your iPhone/iPad, use the iPhone 4 or iPad preset and lower constant quality a bit until you're satisfied with the file size.

Thanks for the reply, Rodeo. That's what I figured, but being that I've never encoded an HD source before, I wasn't sure if there was a better way to get the smaller file size.

[Deleted User 11865]

Depending on how small you want your files to be, you may need to downscale more; but as long as you don't go below RF 26 you're better off keeping as much resolution as possible.

[pecinko]

Hi guys,

I would like to convert existing 1080p mkvs (average 8 000Kbps) to 720p m4vs, in order to play them on ATV2 and sync with iPad. So, any suggestion where to set CQ slider so that converted file is as close to source as possible? I could left default 20 on, but as this will be another conversion of already converted movie I thought lowering this a bit.

Other solution I thought of was going with average bitrate instead of CQ, forcing 720p versions a little lower than 1080p - e.g. 1080p@8000kbps convert to 720p@6000kbps.

What do you think?

[mduell]

I would like to convert existing 1080p mkvs (average 8 000Kbps) to 720p m4vs, in order to play them on ATV2 and sync with iPad. So, any suggestion where to set CQ slider so that converted file is as close to source as possible? I could left default 20 on, but as this will be another conversion of already converted movie I thought lowering this a bit.

Other solution I thought of was going with average bitrate instead of CQ, forcing 720p versions a little lower than 1080p - e.g. 1080p@8000kbps convert to 720p@6000kbps.

RF 20 is the recommended option. I doubt you can see any improvement going lower.

Bitrate ratios make no sense at all.

[pecinko]

I would like to convert existing 1080p mkvs (average 8 000Kbps) to 720p m4vs, in order to play them on ATV2 and sync with iPad. So, any suggestion where to set CQ slider so that converted file is as close to source as possible?

RF 20 is the recommended option. I doubt you can see any improvement going lower.

Bitrate ratios make no sense at all.

Although it didn't make sense to ignorant me, I did as you said. Converted files proved you're right - looking really good on 40" TV.

Many thanks for advice!

[barrios35]

Ok. I have read through all the pages here and I apologize if I miss something.

My goal is to encode a SD DVD to the Itouch 4 which is the same as the Iphone 4. I want to fill the screen completely without distortion. Is that possible? Seems like everything I encode using about 1/3 off the screen in widescreen format and if I tap on it it cuts off a big portion on it.

I am having a hard time grasping that a DVD 4:3 or 16:9 can fill a 65" TV but not a 3" Itouch.

[Deleted User 11865]

My goal is to encode a SD DVD to the Itouch 4 which is the same as the Iphone 4. I want to fill the screen completely without distortion.

1) you don't want to stretch the movie (no "distortion")

Seems like everything I encode using about 1/3 off the screen in widescreen format and if I tap on it it cuts off a big portion on it.

2) you don't want to crop the movie (you're unhappy when "it cuts off a big portion of it")

Take a circle. You don't stretch it, you don't crop it, i.e. you don't change it. What are you expecting if not the exact same circle? An oval?

I am having a hard time grasping that a DVD 4:3 or 16:9 can fill a 65" TV but not a 3" Itouch.

A 16:9 DVD can fill what is most likely a 16:9 DVD. OMG! And no, a 4:3 DVD cannot fill a 16:9 screen unless you either stretch it or crop it.

[TedJ]

In either case, the iTouch screen is neither... it's 960 / 640 = 1.5:1, or 3:2 aspect ratio. You cannot fill this screen with either a 4:3 or 16:9 full frame source without either stretching or cropping it. If you're talking about a movie at 2.35:1 then the problem is even worse.

[barrios35]

My goal is to encode a SD DVD to the Itouch 4 which is the same as the Iphone 4. I want to fill the screen completely without distortion.

1) you don't want to stretch the movie (no "distortion")

Seems like everything I encode using about 1/3 off the screen in widescreen format and if I tap on it it cuts off a big portion on it.

2) you don't want to crop the movie (you're unhappy when "it cuts off a big portion of it")

Take a circle. You don't stretch it, you don't crop it, i.e. you don't change it. What are you expecting if not the exact same circle? An oval?

I am having a hard time grasping that a DVD 4:3 or 16:9 can fill a 65" TV but not a 3" Itouch.

A 16:9 DVD can fill what is most likely a 16:9 DVD. OMG! And no, a 4:3 DVD cannot fill a 16:9 screen unless you either stretch it or crop it.

Maybe I am not using the correct terminology. Ok, I understand what you are saying. So what is the best method to fill the 3" screen with very little distortion. I think I would prefer a little stretch more than a crop.

[phibertron]

If you want to be able to fill the screen on a iphon/itouch, you are going to NOT use anamorphic
then when you watch the video on the iphone/itouch you can doublke tap it to make it zoom
BUT you will lose parts of the left and the right, but it will fill the screen

As previsouly posted
the iphone/itouch is 960x640 (pixels) which is a 1.5/1 screen size ratio
the psp is 480x272 (pixels) which is a 1.77/1 screen size ratio
an old school tv 4x3 which is a 1.33/1 screen size ratio
an widescreen tv 16/9 which is a 1.78/1 screen size ratio

it is the ratio that depicts if we can fill the screen with the source media
if the source ratio is greater then the screen we watch it on, it will have to be padded or cropped (aka zoom) or streched to to fit on the screen
and the iphone/itouch does not do stretch, but will do a zoom
but if the source video is anamorphic, and or has top and bottom matting (the black bars) it wont zoom either

[jspeciner]

Ok... Apologies for the length. I'm looking for my come to Jesus moment here. I've encoded and watched the third chapter from Slumdog Millionaire so many times I'm ready to harm a group of small Indian children. Basically I got this idea in my head that I'm going to digitize/encode/rip/etc my entire 800 disc DVD collection for practicality and "ease of use." Starting from scratch I've been doing a lot of research on how to use HB and FairMount to get this done. I've read the wiki top to bottom and started pecking around these forums for more detailed explanations. The devices I have now that I am targeting "universally" are an ATV2, iPhone 4, iPad (soon to be iPad 2) and a PS3 - initially my thinking was this: I want to encode to h.264 .m4v with each hour of video taking up 512MB of disc space. So, accordingly I started at random with the ATV2 preset and calculated the target size based on run time and plugged that in and ran it in 2-pass (turbo first)... I was pleased, overall, with the results and my tests worked on all of my target devices.

But alas I am OCD and I want to make sure that I am doing all that I can to not only get a good picture/sound/space combo, but that it's future proofed. So realizing that my target size was resulting in 579 kbps and seeing that it's certainly a sub-par kbps for picture, I started to dig a little deeper and threw my target size out the window, assuming that over time space will become cheaper (as it always does). Next, I moved to targeting kbps at 1024 (1mbps, I think) and was still pleased with the result somewhat, but ever the tweaker I moved on. Next I looked at the audio and thought to myself that if I'm compressing video in a fairly substantial way, why not audio just a little bit as well, so I moved my AAC 5.1 mixdown to 128 kbps and instead of AC3 pass-through for DD, I went with 6 channel discrete at 320 kbps. This essentially takes the 448 kbps AC3 audio track and splits it efficiently between two functional tracks - and I have to say I didn't notice much difference at 320 kbps on the AC3, but then again I'm not much of an audiophile So I took the new 160 kbps in savings and turned almost all of it at my video portion, so that now I'm working with a 1,600 kbps total target...

Soooooo... Question is - am I simply turning my gears here? Would I benefit greatly by using constant quality at around 19 or 20 and not bothering with my target kbps? I understand that I can test this and see for myself, but really I'm looking for expert opinions on the pros of using constant quality vs. target kbps over a large sample of movies, assuming I'm not OCD enough to adjust each and every encode for the actual movie. I'm really looking for a set it, forget it and not regret it set of settings to use. Thank you in advance for your opinion.

[jspeciner]

- and I have to say I didn't notice much difference at 320 kbps on the AC3, but then again I'm not much of an audiophile

Strike that… I must have had things too low when I was testing last night… There's a sizable difference, especially when applying DRC at 1, which I would think necessary if I were to use this. So AC3 passthrough it is.

[henrikhoe]

Does anyone got a good profile with some advanced settings for encoding to the apple tv 2, im really having problems with artifacts and fast moving scenes and poor quality.

Aiming for a 3gb file on all my movies, and most of them are 6-7gb.

Would really appreciate some help

[henrikhoe]

Nevermind. I found this awesome setting. One question though. My 10gb bluray rips. Gets to 2,3 gb size. After i hav encoded them. Thia normal? Seems so low. I use rf 22. This normal? I man the quality is much better then the Apple tv 2 preset. But takes and hour longer to encode. But so worth it.

But again is the file sizes normal?

Here's the setting for anyone who would like to try it

ref=5:me=umh:b-adapt=2:weightp=0:direct=auto:no-dct-decimate=1:merange=32:bframes=5:subq=9:vbv-maxrate=12000:vbv-bufsize=12000

[Deleted User 11865]

As long as you're happy with the quality, RF 22 is fine for HD.

If you're targeting the second-generation AppleTV, there's no need to disable weightp. merange 32 is a bit overkill; you probably will see very little different between that and 24 or even the default of 16.