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Encoding movies for TV and iPhone/iPod use..

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I haven't gotten much help anywhere else, so I thought I'd ask this here.

I've been wanting to start ripping my DVDs to MP4s. Mainly for use on my iPhone, but I'd like to start a media library for my future media center or Apple TV. I'd like to find a happy medium-- one file that will work well on TV but still can be used on my iPhone. But I doubt I'm going to find that, so I'm dealing with the fact of having two different versions-- one for TV and one for iPhone.

Unfortunately, encoding on my PowerBook is way too slow-- 15+ hours to encode a 2.5 hour movie. I just bought an Elgato Turbo.264 USB hardware encoder, which encodes the same movie in around 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, I have to use their software. (It'd be nice if someone found a hack so I could use it with Handbrake). Last week I tested Handbrake's defaults for the iPhone, iPod (Hi Rez), and Apple TV. And like I figured, I couldn't put the Apple TV encode on my iPhone.

Yesterday I encoded the same movie using the Turbo.264 and the default presets in their software. I encoded it using their Apple TV and iPhone presets. Today I found I was able to put both encodes on my iPhone. Something doesn't seem right. When I watch them on the iPhone, the iPhone encode looks good. The Apple TV encode looks crisper, BUT a little distorted-- looks crunched horizontally, so everything looks taller. Which leads me to my first question...

Why would the Apple TV version crisper yet basically the same size as the iPhone encode?

So I've decided I don't like the default settings of Elgato's software. It gives me an option to make my own presets. I've had the idea of copying Handbrakes presets and making custom entries in the other software. When I enter the custom size, should I use the Output or Anamorphic size? Or should I just choose the aspect ratio of the DVD and let the software do the rest?

Another question, has anyone experimented with a happy medium between TV use and iPhone or iPod use? What were your results and were you happy with them?

Sorry for the long post, but I'm getting frustrated with this.
 
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Have you tried using the Normal preset? I know it works on the iPhone and should work just fine on the AppleTV.

And I've found that the Anamorphic option sucks because of how it distorts the video. I would stay away from it.
 
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All my encodes using Handbrake's AppleTV default use anamorphic which looks fine when played on my widescreen TV via AppleTV. In iTunes, however, it looks squished. Not really sure what the deal is, but it doesn't matter to me as I never play them on the computer.

If you use the highest settings available for iPod, that's the best you're going to get that will work on both. Using the best settings for AppleTV will yield something unplayable on ipods.
 
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Hi I am new to this forum, and hope you can help. I want to rip my dvds and watch them on my iphone. I used handbrake to create an MPEG4 but cant seem to get it onto the iphone.
Regards
 
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