How to convert video to Apple’s iPhone
Apple’s iPhone is likely to be one of the biggest gadget releases in 2007. It’s also unlikely to be sold with Apple’s iTunes Pro software so if you plan on converting your favourite movies or shows to your iPhone, you’re going to have to work it out yourself.
The reality is, however, you can start creating your iPhone video library right now because the tools already exist.
Although Apple has been reasonably scant on giving out the iPhone’s technical details, there’s enough information just from Apple’s iPhone website to help you create exactly what you need.
If you look at the technical specs of the iPhone, the Apple website says the screen is 480×320-pixels. Now if you read the fine print at the bottom of the screen it says “Up to 5 hours of battery life is based on H.264 1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps audio”. Now we’re going to make the assumption that if it supports H.264 video compression, it will also support baseline MPEG-4 compression, just as the video-capable iPod does. We’ll be using this baseline MPEG-4 option although you’re free to stick with H.264 if you want. The reason we want MPEG-4 is because it is easier to decode than H.264 and that means less CPU required. That should mean less power which we suspect will in turn lead to better battery life than the five hours Apple states is possible with H.264. We also know that since it will sync with iTunes, the audio codec support will have to include AAC so based on that, we know the basic audio/video requirements the iPhone needs.
What you need
Because it is pretty much illegal now to rip Hollywood DVD movies in most parts of the world, we’ll leave it up to you where you get your video content from. But what we will do is show you how to get your video (and audio) content into a format that will play on the iPhone.
And what you’ll need is a copy of Videora’s iPod Video Converter. We assume that Apple will use iTunes to sync up video and music files so we won’t cover that here.
You can download the converter from here
How to do it
Once you’ve installed the iPod Video Converter, start it up and click on the Settings button/icon along the top and ensure you’re looking at the Converter tab.
This tool doesn’t currently have an profile for the iPhone – it most likely will eventually but here’s how you can create your own now. Here, click on the New Profile button. The key feature of the iPod Video Converter is its ability to create user profiles. These are settings that are using each time you select that profile and what we’re going to do is to create our own iPhone profile.
In the General properties section, type iPhone for the name of the profile. Ensure the Encoder entry still says iPod 1-pass 0 FFmpeg MINB. Videora uses the excellent FFmpeg command line video encoder to convert your files into MPEG-4 format. It’s one of the fastest encoders out there and does a pretty decent job. Next, click on the Video tab.
Now you’ll see various tabs in a new window but you should be on the General tab only.
First, ensure the video codec entry is set to MPEG-4. The default H.264 option will give you slightly better video but you’re unlikely to see it on the three-inch screen.
In the Bitrate section, drop the video bitrate to 512Kbps.
Now here comes the snazzy bit – in the resolution box, set the width to 480 pixels and the height to 320 pixels. This is the native resolution of the iPhone LCD screen and this is the best resolution to encode your videos to.
The iPhone will accept 640×480-pixel resolution video without the need to convert it but it will have to down-convert it to get it to fit on the screen. That’s just a waste of processing power. Much better to encode the video to the right resolution to start with and save as much battery power as you can.
The final thing you need to do here is to click off the Enabled check box in the AutoResize section. If you don’t, it won’t convert your videos to the right size we need.
Next, click on the Audio button/icon at the top of the window. Check that the audio bit rate is set to 128Kbps and then hit the OK button.
Again, this will be enough to give decent video quality as well as giving you enough space on a 4GB unit to have 13 hours worth of video with audio or a bit more than six two-hour movies. (This is provided that you actually do get access to the full 4GB of storage - there has been some rumours that you won’t get it all but that still remains to be seen).
Now go back to the Convert button/icon at the top of the main window and select the Current Conversion tab. In the New Video to Convert box, make sure you select iPhone for the Profile option.
Now click on the Convert video command button and load in a video file you wish to convert. Once you’ve done that, hit the Start button.
Videora iPod Video Converter will now convert your chosen file into a format that’s ideal for the screen resolution of the iPhone and using a video codec and bitrate that should help conserve its battery life.
When it’s completed, and provided you followed the standard installation process, you’ll find the converted video file in your My Documents/Converted Videos/MPEG-4 folder.
Testing the file
After you’ve done your first video conversion, load it into QuickTime just to make sure it works correctly. The word is that if it works here, it should work on the iPhone.
Now all you need to do is use iTunes when you get your iPhone to sync up your videos to its storage and you should be able to enjoy your shows on the go with that nice big 3.5-inch screen.
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Tags: apple, audio, command, convert, converter, download, encode, Encoder, Format, how to, iphone, ipod, Software, video, video converter
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