1080p home video to an iPhone 4 converting bitrate???

I have a couple of HD home videos in 1080p. I am about to convert them so that they can be viewable on my iPhone 4. I use handbrake and I love it. This is what I would like to know:

What's the highest bitrate to use with Handbrake, so that the 1080p home video looks just as good on the iPhone 4?

For other home videos, I've recorded them on DVD's. When I convert from a DVD, I usually do 2000-25000 kbps and they look just phenomenal, but that was only up to the 720x480 resolution. I have never had to convert a 1080p home video for an iPhone. This would be my first time and that's why I was wondering.

Suggestions would be appreciated and I'd love to hear something a little bit more than just an opinion. A fact would be great, so I will never have to struggle with it again... ...

25000?!?!?!??? That bit rate is huge for a DVD, way more then you'd ever need - please tell me it was just a typo and you meant to type 2500?

Now conveniently, the iPhone 4 is 960x680. A standard division of 1080p is 960x540 which IMHO is the dimensions you will want so go into picture settings, set Anamorphic for loose and change the width to 960.

These days I rarely do bitrate any more, I usually do constant quality at an RF of between 17-18. In the advanced area I usually use Weighted B Frames, Uneven MultiHexagon, 8x8 DCT Max=25000 BITRATEBUFFER=25000 (this one may be worded differently, but it is a buffer size that needs to be the same as the max bitrate - I'm also at work so I'm doing this by memory) Usually when I encode for 1080p output I use a Max and buffer of around 35000 - but you're not encoding 1080p, your transcoding to a smaller rez. You *may* have to mess with your max, buffer and ref amounts tho as I'm not sure how well the iPhone 4 will work with exceedingly high bitrates. You could probably easily set the max way down to 4000-6000.

If you wanted to stick with VBR instead of using CQ, I'd try in the 3500-6000 range as that's what I normally use for 720p footage (and 960x540 is close enough). I do transcode to 960x540 but I always use CQ and then tweak my bitrates for the movie and/or output device as some won't support certain bitrates.

That should at least get you started. I'd transcode a short one with a few settings tweaked and see how they play on the iPhone. Some people accept lesser quality. One forum I visit the people will do CQ at 60% or less (RF20 or higher) and they find that video "awesome" where I think it looks like crap.

I personally just use the AppleTV preset for my HD movies and they all look phenomenal on the iPhone 4

Actually I ended up buying the iMedia Converter, but found Handbrake to be much faster and with higher quality. Now they won't give me a refund. What a joke!

schizzo_fg said:

Actually I ended up buying the iMedia Converter, but found Handbrake to be much faster and with higher quality. Now they won't give me a refund. What a joke!

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Sorry, you got caught by one of these. That's how they make their money from the unsuspecting.

That's because it's one of the typical pieces of spammer software coming out of china with absolutely no support whatsoever. Good luck - hope you can even get a response out of them.

(The post being referred to has been deleted.)

For others reading this post, I would suggest never buying software related to audio/video encoding based upon suggestions made by another brand new member to any forum - most likely they are spammers and the free or low cost software suggested by the regular members will be superior to any of that junk.

For that matter - anyone joining any forum and making their very first post to suggest a piece of software is going to be a spammer about 99.5% of the time.

I wish forums like these would ban any active URLs in posts until they hit their let's say 50th post.

chas_m said:

I wish forums like these would ban any active URLs in posts until they hit their let's say 50th post.

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I'm a member of a couple of those forums. I didn't stick around either one of them for very long and don't visit them very often. Makes it extremely hard for a lot of legitimate members to be either helpful or post pics of the problems they're having.

The software we currently have in place, seems to be catching better than 50% of them before the post goes live. Some of them are getting around this now, by <deleted this> and just <so that more don't learn how>.

chas_m said:

I wish forums like these would ban any active URLs in posts until they hit their let's say 50th post.

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The problem with that is you may end up missing some good information from valid users.

Glad I read this thread.

I'm glad I read the posts in this thread. I was thinking of purchasing iMedia Converter Deluxe. I'd downloaded a trial version, and converted one video and compared it with a Handbrake conversion of the same file. The file sizes of both conversions were similar and in my opinion the quality of iMedia Converter was not as good as Handbrake. There appeared to be more compression artifacts but was looking for others opinion. This forum has convinced me not to purchase it, and confirmed my views of the quality of the conversion.

iMedia Converter Deluxe appears to have a simple interface, and and appears to included a few features not in Handbrake, such as merging and editing files, but the quality of the conversion is paramount for me.

So. I'll continue to use Handbrake, which is a great program, and the best value possible.

I should mention that I was looking at iMedia Converter Deluxe because of an email I received from Macworld Offers with 30% off (for $49). However I couldn't find a review of the program by Macworld or anyone else.

bj10au said:

I'm glad I read the posts in this thread. I was thinking of purchasing iMedia Converter Deluxe. I'd downloaded a trial version, and converted one video and compared it with a Handbrake conversion of the same file. The file sizes of both conversions were similar and in my opinion the quality of iMedia Converter was not as good as Handbrake. There appeared to be more compression artifacts but was looking for others opinion. This forum has convinced me not to purchase it, and confirmed my views of the quality of the conversion.

iMedia Converter Deluxe appears to have a simple interface, and and appears to included a few features not in Handbrake, such as merging and editing files, but the quality of the conversion is paramount for me.

So. I'll continue to use Handbrake, which is a great program, and the best value possible.

I should mention that I was looking at iMedia Converter Deluxe because of an email I received from Macworld Offers with 30% off (for $49). However I couldn't find a review of the program by Macworld or anyone else.

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It's unfortunate that a reputable magazine like Macworld is essentially giving this garbage an endorsement. iSkysoft, Aiseesoft, and a variety of other oddly named Chinese outfits are peddling a series of video converters/media authoring programs that are all based on the same (crap) back-end, with slightly differing front-ends. They have earned the ire of many forums since they primarily advertise via forum spam.

These companies are shady at best. If you are fooled into buying one of these products, I would be vigilant about watching your credit card statements. I wouldn't trust them with your personal information either.