Video On The iPhoneSo I ordered some DVDs. I wanted to watch these videos on the train by ripping them from my Mac to my iTunes, and then placing them on my iPhone. So I proceed to rip them using HandBrake, and I successfully place the videos into iTunes, as I’d done with other DVDs I own many times before. Then, I proceed to copy these videos onto my iPhone, except that they won’t copy over. Any idea what’s wrong? It could be that iTunes won’t move any video other than DRMed video purchased from the iTunes store. But that doesn’t seem like it would be right. Otherwise, how would anybody be able to carry home movies with them on their iPhone? The other possibility is that I sipped the files at too high a bitrate, and thus the videos wouldn’t fir on the phone. I admit that I did use the AppleTV bitrate settings, and not the iPod settings, but again, can iTunes not scale back the bitrate for varying devices? This would mean that I would have to rip everything twice, once to be able to watch it on my AppleTV and again to watch it on my iPhone. Same for home movies. So what gives? Any help would be appreciated. |
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2 Responses to “Video On The iPhone”
September 26th, 2008 at 10:23 am
You got it in one: no, iTunes cannot (or, at least, does not) scale back the bitrate for varying devices. The max ATV bitrate exceeds the max bit rate on the iPhone (or any other iPod), so video at that rate will not play. And yes, this does mean you have to rip stuff twice. Very irritating, I know.
On the plus side, ripping specifically for the phone allows the rip to do the picture scaling, rather than the phone, which saves both file size and power.
What I tend to do is encode hi-def stuff for the ATV, and std definition for the iPhone. The ATV can still play the iPhone specific files, and std def looks like crap already, even the even smaller picture of the iPhone resolution isn’t much worse.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Oh, another compromise solution is to use the ATV settings, but limit the bit rate to the iPhone’s max. Only difference here is that the phone will do scaling as it plays to fit the smaller screen, which will use more power. Files will also be larger than files specifically for the phone.
I’ll note also that when you buy the new HD television episodes, you get two versions of the file, one in HD with 5.1 sound, one for the phone.
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