XVID to iPod h.264 640w Experience

[stingerster]

Since most of the homemade movies seem to be in xvid format, I played around with coverting them for my iPod:

1st try - XVID direct to iPod h.264 640w w/ default QT decode checked
result: no picture no sound just a long white screen at the right resolution though.

2nd try - XVID direct to iPod h.264 640w w/o default QT decode checked
result: accelerated speed framerate, sound does not sync
(Play button on the Open line plays original video just fine in mplayer, but there is no use mplayer to decode option in the Options tab?)

3rd try - two parts: a&b
(a) XVID to AVI DivX (efault preset that appears) no options checked.
This went by very fast and resulted in a ff.avi encoded file. Quicktime required the DivX codec to play back so I downloaded and installed the free DivX codec from http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/codec/ now new file played just fine in Quicktime.

(b) AVI DivX direct to iPod h.264 640w w/ default QT decode checked
I assume the new DivX codec was used by QT to decode and it is a pretty quick codec and I noticed multithreaded. Everything converted just fine to H.264 and QT recognizes the codec as H.246 in the movie info. Plays well in QT with Apple's native H.264 codec.

Copied file to iTunes to sync with my iPod 5th Gen 30GB. Itunes will not sync movie with iPod however. Right now I am using the built in iTunes covert for iPod option on the ffmpegX converted h.264 movie. I hope this will cause it to sync.

So in conclusion, it's a two step conversion process to get it to h.264 @640w. I am assuming the DivX codec is required for the second part of the conversion.

Things to try: Install an Xvid Codec for quicktime and try the Xvid -> iPod 640w encoding with QT enabled. Anyone recommend a codec to try?

issue: Do you think the next ffmpegx will fix the iTunes / ipod synching?

[stingerster]

Update:

For some reason the the ffmpegx movie now has synched to the iPod. So does the iTunes converted movie, which we would expect.

OK here are the differences between what ffmpegx created and what iTune's "Convert selection for ipod" context menu option created:

ffmpegx (.mp4 extension)
---------
Format:
H.264 Decoder, 640 x 352, Millions
AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
FPS: 23.98
Data Size: 198.16MB
Data Rate: 887.78 kbits/sec

iTunes conversion of above file (.mpv extension)
-----------------------------------
Format: (iTunes creates two video and sound tracks, the second set are the first 4 seconds, of the movie, the first set is the rest of the movie. They must do this for optimizing playback and buffering on the iPod.?)
AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz
H.264 Decoder, 640 x 352, Millions
H.264 Decoder, 640 x 352, Millions
AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
FPS: 23.98
Data Size: 359.66 MB
Data Rate: 1611.32 kbits/sec


So iTunes default data rate is higher. I have QT Pro, so I wonder if the convert to iPod option is available for non QT Pro users within iTunes?

[iNfEk]

i get the same problem as the OP with the exception of that the AVI's that I'm using are only 25 minutes long at the most and I get a ton of "error, non monotone timestamp ######## >= #######" throughout the entire log.

The movie source has the following info per ffmpegX

VIDEO: [XVID] 640x480 12bpp 23.976
fps 50.2 kbps (91.6 kbyte/s)
audiocodec: framecopy (format=55 chans=2 rate=48000 bits=0 B/s=16000 sample-1)

I'm using the default encoding profile with the exception of the options tab.

uncheck Decode with Quicktime

The audio and video of the resulting file is out of sync by at least 10 seconds or more. While encoding the output file splits into 3 separate files then when it's finished then becomes one.

Any help so that I can use the H.264 options instead of mpeg encoding would be great since H.264 from what I can recall should be small in file size.

There is NO TROUBLE with mpeg encoding option for ipod.

[iNfEk]

further, If I use VisualHub the audio and video are in sync. I'd really like to use ffmpegx exclusively since it seems to be a very powerful program compared to the others.

hopefully this gets resolves soon!