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September 19, 2006

ipod

Why won’t the 5.5G iPod play my 640 x 480 videos?

Posted Sep. 19, ’06, 4:02 PM PT by Aaron Freedman
Category | iPod

Ivideos After September 12th, I was pretty disappointed about the lack of a widescreen video iPod, which I planned on purchasing. But, I decided instead to get the new 5.5G iPod. One of the things that intrigued me about this new iPod is its support for 640 x 480 H.264 video. Now, the original 5G iPod had only supported H.264 video up to 300 macroblocks, or 16 x 16 pixel blocks, totaling up to 76,800 pixels. With the new 640 x 480 support on the 5.5G iPod, I would now be able to watch near-DVD quality video from my iPod on my TV. Or so I thought. I started out by encoding a video, Finding Nemo, in Handbrake, meeting all of Apple’s specifications (see “Video”): less than to 1.5 Mbps, 640 x 480 (mine was actually less than 480 pixels high, though in the end that did not seem to matter), Baseline profile, 30 fps, etc. But, to my surprise, iTunes did not consider the video “iPod compatible,” and thus did not sync it. Furious (well, actually I wasn’t, but the word just has that excellent dramatic effect), I took it upon myself to figure out what had gone wrong. After many different encodings, I finally came to an answer. I encoded two videos, each with identical specs (H.264 Baseline, AAC 128 kbps 44.100 kHz audio, 715 kbps video, 29.97 fps), except that one was 640 x 352, and the other was 320 x 176. Apparently, only the second, smaller video got on to my iPod. But why? iTS movies are 640 x 480 and even over 1.5 Mbps, but they get synced, so why can’t my video at under 758 kbps? The problem could be in the 5.5G iPod, or even iTunes 7 itself. After all, it is iTunes that judges a video as “iPod playable.” But maybe it’s just me. Are any of you guys experiencing similar problems?

UPDATE: Well, I’ve found the answer to my 640 x 480 Handbrake video woes: I don’t read carefully enough. Apparently, according to Apple’s iPod specs, the 5.5G iPod supports 640 x 480 H.264 encoding at Baseline Low-Complexity Profile, while 320 x 240 H.264 uses the normal Baseline Profile (thanks for the heads-up, commentor THEM). Handbrake currently does not support the Baseline Low-Complexity Profile, though support for it has been strongly requested on the Handbrake Forums. I have found two answers, though, to encoding H.264 640 x 480 video for my iPod. 1) As I suspected, but was not sure of, Quicktime Pro 7.1.3 encodes H.264 640 x 480 video for the iPod, but has no options for changing the settings, while 2) VisualHub allows 640 x 480 H.264 encoding with the ability to change around the options, but is $23.32. P.S. Apple, I’m sorry I called you a liar. You were, as usual, right.

10 Comments

Joe said:

I am only having success with FFmpeg. I'm using 1.6mbits (which looks great) without any problem. I had no success at any bit rate with h.264. I haven't tried fiddling with resolution, but that's because I thought 640 was a no-brainer.

Most of the video podcasts I have won't transfer and a few video podcasts crash my iPod (a 5.5g).

I am a tad upset. I tried to find a way to blame Microsoft, but couldn't. Here's hoping his Steveness has a 5.5 and is going through the same pain the rest of us are.

September 19, 2006 4:45 PM
Billo said:

i had the same problem when using handbrake.
though i checked with a video already on my system, and used quicktime pro to "esport to iPod" function.
This resulted in a 640x480 movie which played on my iPod perfectly.
So there must be something in the handbrake conversion that we are missing.

September 19, 2006 4:59 PM
Paul said:

I went through the exact same thing, and what I learned from the Handbrake forums is that the new ipod software update enables the 5g ipod to play 640x480 H.264 video with the baseline LOW COMPLEXITY profile. Handbrake is not yet able to encode using this profile, but Quicktime Pro will as will ViddyUp--but that makes for a two step encoding process. Hopefully Handbrake will support this format soon. I have no idea what the difference is between the baseline profile and the baseline low complexity profile, but what is interesting is that the movies from the iTS are 4 times the resolution, but only seem to be about 2-3 times the size as movies that were 320x240 H.264. Very curious.....

September 19, 2006 5:00 PM
GetUp said:

"It appears that several third party video encoders do not support the Baseline Low Complexity Profile required by the iPod for 640x480 H.264 video. For example, video encoded at that resolution directly from DVD using the popular Handbrake application does not work on the iPod. MPEG4 video continues to work fine, however."
From http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2006/09/ipod-h264-video-quality-test.html

September 19, 2006 5:03 PM
Corey said:

I have an original 5G iPod, updated with the latest firmware, and I tried a similar experiment with Handbrake. Using plain vanilla MPEG-4, I had no problems with 640x480 video at a bitrate of 1000kbps (a set of criteria that would previously not allow a video to sync with my iPod). So your problem must have something to do with using the H.264 format. I tried ripping the same video in H.264 and found that the quality was only marginally better (if that), than regular MPEG-4, and the file was much larger as well. I've never seen the benefit of H.264 over regular MPEG-4. Why would you pick one over the other?

September 19, 2006 5:41 PM
Jonny said:

Apple changed the baseline complexity profile. We need to wait for a new version of handbrake which supports the new codec.

September 19, 2006 7:25 PM
THEM Author Profile Page said:

Read the specs more carefully okay. For 640x480 you need baseline low complexity. Handbrake only supports baseline. Switch Handbrake to regular MPEG-4 video and you can encode DVDs at native resolutions.

September 19, 2006 8:03 PM
Padriac said:

Creating videos that play on an iPod has always been black art. Things will refuse to play for seemingly no reason. It's been like this since before the 640 era, so don't feel too special.

Best workaround for this:

Use handbrake to encode the file as an mpeg at some ridiculously high bitrate. Don't worry, it's only temporary.

Use either Quicktime Pro (Export to iPod) or iTunes (make iPod compatible) to get yourself an iPod happy version.

Delete the original handbrake version if you like.

Yeah, it sucks it requires that extra conversion step. But, if you encode the original in MPEG and not h.264, the first conversion will blaze by compared to the second.

September 19, 2006 10:42 PM
Ken said:

The difference between your 640x480 video and your 320x176 video is only 0.74MB? That doesn't seem plausible.

September 20, 2006 6:38 AM
Scott said:

I'd stick with 320x240 or 320x176. You don't need that kind of resolution on that little screen.

October 9, 2006 10:03 AM

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