Is it worth it to use a resolution greater than 320x240 for Ipod video?

[FallenAngelII]

Will the quality be better on a 480xwhatever file using roughly the same bitrate as a 320xwhatever file? Is it worth it to upscale the files? Or should I always encode all of my Ipod videos into 320xwhatever?

[zoobie]

because 480 is a larger resolution, it will be worse quality using the same bitrate

[thecoalman]

How large is the screen resolution? That would be the ideal resolution.

because 480 is a larger resolution, it will be worse quality using the same bitrate

Dependant of course on what the bitrate of the smaller video is. If the smaller video is using a bitrate that is overkill .... Each resolution/format has a sweet spot, too little bitrate and you get macroblocking. too much and you're just creating a bigger file.

[FallenAngelII]

Which are the bitrates at which one should stop for each of the following resolutions:
320x240, 480x360, 640x480

[thecoalman]

I'm not familiar with what format the Ipod uses but it depends on the format, haven't done any "get out the microscope" tests myself but for 320x240 the max for MPEG1 would be around 1000kbps, WMV on the other hand would be more like 300kbps. Those are just off the top of my head, they aren't specific rates you would use but should be fairly close.

[FallenAngelII]

Here's another question:
Is it worth it to upscale the video?

Apparentely, either the new Ipod (5.5) or the new firmware (1.2) allows you to play videos with a resolution up to 640x480.

Is it worth it to encode video with a resolution greater than 320xXXX since it's gonna be shown in 320xXXX, anyway? Is it better to just increase the bitrate if you want better picture quality?

[Ai Haibara]

Overall, you can't really gain quality in an already-encoded video file by scaling it up (from 320x to 640x, for example), or increasing the bitrate. Plus, to do either, you'll have to re-encode, which means you'll also lose a bit of quality in the process.

[jntaylor63]

If you plan on watching your Ipod vids on a big screen (TV or Computer), then go 640xYYY and the highets bitrate Ipod will allow.

[Scarpad]

The Increased resolution of the New Ipods are strictly for outputting them to a display device
the screen is still 320x240, if you are going to ever only watch on the Ipod make the file 320x240 for the best files size. You get no benefit on the ipod's screen by having it at a higher res since it will be scaled back to 320x240

[Dr. DOS]

I recently converted Starwars Ep 1 to both a 640x480 2.0M/s and a 320x240 768k/s video file (both with Nero Recode)

When playing back on the Ipod there was no difference... but when played back on a tv the 640 video was much clearer.

Here is specs for 5th Generation ipods

H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Low-Complexity Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;

H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;

MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

[FallenAngelII]

I mean when it comes picture quality. The bigger the screen resolution, the better the quality (if we're gonna have high bitrates). But will a higher resolution make any difference if you're only going to watch it on your iPod?

Or should you just give it a really high bitrate if you want good quality?

I read somewhere that the newer iPods can play Xvid (probably the MPEG-4 DOS was talking about). Does it play DivX as well?

[Ai Haibara]

Only if you're converting from a better-quality source to begin with, say, a DVD video. Then you can scale it down to the lower resolutions of iPod video formats and whatever bitrate you prefer (as long as the iPod accepts it, of course ) If you're expecting to scale a 320x240 video UP to 640x480 (for example) and/or give it higher bitrate and get higher picture quality as a result, you can't, as I wrote above.

[FallenAngelII]

Only if you're converting from a better-quality source to begin with, say, a DVD video. Then you can scale it down to the lower resolutions of iPod video formats and whatever bitrate you prefer (as long as the iPod accepts it, of course ) If you're expecting to scale a 320x240 video UP to 640x480 (for example) and/or give it higher bitrate and get higher picture quality as a result, you can't, as I wrote above.

I'm strictly talking about high quality sources like HDTV-quality rips and DVDs. Is it worth it to convert them into 640xXXX with high bitrates compared to 320x240 with high bitrates if you only intend to watch them on your iPod?

[GMaq]

Hi,
You can playback DivX, 3ivX, XviD, and Nero Digital Standard on an iPod as long as:

1. It's not greater than 307200 pixels in total, so anamorphic encodes like 704x304 are supported as well as fullscreen 640x480 as long as the height x width doesn't total more than 307200 pixels.

2. It doesn't exceed 2500 kbps bitrate

3. It is muxed into a mp4 or MOV container with AAC Audio up to 160kbps.

4. The Video is encoded with I,P, frames only, iPods don't playback B-Frames.

As to your original question I like to split the difference and use a resolution of 512x384 for full screen and 624x352 for wide-screen and a bitrate of 1000-1250 kbps, this gives sufficient quality for TV viewing without the larger bitrate and filesizes of 640x480.

If you prefer H.264 then a bitrate of 1000kbps at the larger 640x480 resolution is a nice compromise as well, If you are going to spend all that time encoding you might as well end up with something that looks decent on the iPod and TV as well.

[Ai Haibara]

So, you can have, say, a 640x480 encode on your iPod and the iPod will automatically resize it while playing for the small window, if you're just playing it on the iPod? That's what I was wondering. If that's the case, FallenAngelII, you can definitely use the higher resolutions and bitrate.

But I still have one question: GMaq, is there definitely a noticeable difference if you play a higher-resolution video than the 320x240 videos on the iPod alone (no TV output)? If there isn't, it'd probably be better just to optimize it for the lower resolution and save the drive space that the higher-resolution/bitrate video would occupy.

[thecoalman]

Here's another question:
Is it worth it to upscale the video?

Scaling video up will make it worse. The best it's going to be is whatever the source is, any coversion you make will downgrde the quality and scaling it up will downgarde it considerably.

[Richard_G]

Perhaps a bit off topic but something I feel I have to ask. Why would anyone actually want to watch video on some tiny little display on an iPod or similar device? Personally I fail to see what the attraction is. The display is so small that it doesn't matter what the quality is like, unless you are looking at it through a microscope, you'll never see any difference anyway.

[GMaq]

@Ai Haibara
Since the iPod screen is 320x240 IF you are going to watch it on the iPod only, there is no advantage to making the video a larger resolution size, in fact if you are using H.264 bitrates of 600kbps or even less are quite sufficient, IMHO the larger res stuff doesn't look any better (on the iPod). So you are absolutely right, why bother wasting space, it will probably still look decent on a 21" CRT TV.

[FallenAngelII]

Perhaps a bit off topic but something I feel I have to ask. Why would anyone actually want to watch video on some tiny little display on an iPod or similar device? Personally I fail to see what the attraction is. The display is so small that it doesn't matter what the quality is like, unless you are looking at it through a microscope, you'll never see any difference anyway.

Not upscale as in upscaling the source video, but as in encoding the target file into something bigger than 320xXXX.