Steves71’s Blog

From time to time I watch videos on my iPod Touch and N95-8GB, the trouble has been that videos created for the iPod either won’t play on the N95 or they don’t play well. Yesterday I spent the afternoon downloading and testing various video encoders to try and find one that created a file that plays well on both and I have found IMO the best two for the job. My criteria for the encoders were that they must be quick, create a video file that plays equally well on both devices and most importantly, it must be able to create a video in exactly the same aspect ratio as the original. It’s no good if the final video is 320×240 and it keeps the aspect ratio by adding black bars top and bottom because this then means it won’t work properly on the Touch in full screen mode.

Converting AVI, MPG etc.
I couldn’t find a freeware program that I liked, so I finally settled on WinAvi. It has several profiles to convert video for iPods, PSP and also 3gp and MP4 formats. I found that using the MP4 profile with audio set to 96, video bitrate set at 512 and for video size I chose original video size this produced a decent quality video that plays just as well on both devices. It also has batch encoding and its fast, a 45 minute TV episode was done in about 8 minutes.

Ripping and Encoding DVD
This time I found a freeware solution using Handbrake. Handbrake wont work on copy protected DVD’s so first they have to be ripped to your hard drive using something like DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor, both freeware. With Handbrake I used the iPod Touch profile but changed the encoder from H.264 to Mpeg4, video bit rate set to 512 and audio to 96. With handbrake you can just specify the width of the output video and it will adjust the height accordingly so as to maintain the original aspect ration.

I’m very pleased with the end result of both programs, they both produce a video that looks great on the Touch and N95 8GB. I don’t plug either device into a TV to watch movies though I did test it with the N95, the quality was acceptable on a 28” though If I watched on a TV more often I’d use a higher video bit rate, I used 512 because it keeps the file size down and produces a decent on device video quality.