MediaCoder for iPod 5G Video

From MediaCoderWiki

I think the best feature of the iPod Video is, not surprisingly, the ability to play videos. But the small LCD screen is not ideal to watch movies, so I intented to hook iPod directly to the TV set.

Since I bought my iPod, i've been experimenting the MediaCoder+iPod+TV combo. Well, it turns out that this combination works really well, as long as you have the A/V cable (the 'three-headed' RCA cable) and a little bit of patience. Of course, the quality of the original video is very important, too.

That being said, I found out that the best settings to use with an iPod 5G Video are not the ones that are shown by the iPod extension. After much experimentation, i've come up with a bunch of tweaks to the original settings that really make the difference between watching a near-VHS-quality video (i mean, a deceiving, poor experience) to a DVD-quality one (a rewarding experience!).

Tweaking the defaults

The first step in the yellow brick road is to choose the iPod extension in the menu. Then, close the 'iPod interface', responding 'Yes' to the first question ('keep the settings as they are') and 'No' to the second ('treat this as the default').

The first setting that can be tweaked is the resolution, in the 'Picture' tab. It can go as high as 640x480. Use 320x240 only if you're planning on viewing the video exclusively on your iPod and not on a TV screen. 320x240 just won't cut it if you have a good TV. As I said before, the encoding quality depends on the quality of the source. For instance, if you have a 480x320 source, and choose to use 640x480 resolution for the final video, the quality will rely heavily on the interpolation software algorithm (linear, bicubic, etc - this setting is available on the XUL interface, keep reading!).

Note: upscaling the resolution of video files is not recommended: It creates a bigger output file with at best the same quality as the original. Leave upscaling to the iPod hardware, as it has dedicated hardware for that job.

The other setting that should be tweaked is the bitrate, from the 'Video' tab. Use 768k for near-DVD quality, or 1024 for DVD-quality, if you can afford it (the file is going to get big!). Again, the 512k is not up to par; if can use it of course, but if this is the case, expect to see a lot of artifacts on the screen, especially on fast moving sequences and fade-ins/fade-outs.

The last setting is the 'quality' setting, which is only available through the XUL interface. You can reach it from the 'Video' tab, by pressing the 'Mode' button (i mean, as per 0.6.0 build 3678 - this button has been renamed and moved many times, and may move again without further notice).

Please feel free to make your own experimentations and post any suggestions here. Last but not least, be aware that MediaCoder is a work-in-progress, so these tweaks are subject to change.

Supported MediaCoder settings

iPod supports viewing movies on it's own screen (320 x 240), but also larger resolutions (up to 640 x 480) for viewing iPod movies on your television.

Since encoding for larger resolutions involves bigger files, it's important to know whether you want to view your movies only on your iPod (using 320 x 240), or on your TV (640 x 480) as well. You can play 640 x 480 files on your iPod.

The following settings are iPod 5.5G (firmware 1.2.1) supported:

Audio

Encoder: Nero Encoder

Resample: (up to 48000 Hz)

Nero Settings

Profile: LC-AAC

Bitrate: (up to 160 Kbps)

Video

Note: you can use either Xvid or H.264 Xvid encodes faster, but H.264 files are smaller

Xvid:

Mode: Bitrate-based (up to 2500 Kbps)

Format: Xvid

H.264:

Mode: Bitrate-based (up to 2500 Kbps)

Format: H.264

x264 (H.264)

Level of bitstream: 30

Maximum local bitrate: 1500

Averaging period for maximum local bitrate: 2000

Muxer

Enabled

Multiplexer: MP4Box

Picture

Resize: up to 640x480

Scale down only: true

Framerate: (up to 30 fps)