How to put video on Iphone?

. Friday, March 28, 2008

In fact its quite easy just need to know few facts about Iphone:

  • Iphone can support movies with resolution upto 640x480, however its own screen is only 480x320, so if you have no intentions of outputting it to TV no need of higher resolutions than native [480x320]
  • Although Iphone supports several formats, the most "open" and easiest to work with is H.246/x264 in MP4 container.
  • x264 Encoding DOES support SMP (Multiple Cores) and having Dual/Quad cores helps a LOT!
  • MP4 (for Iphone) requires Audio in AAC-LC format
  • There are several absolutely FREE tools to convert your movies to iPhone (HandBreak and Ripbot264 just to name a few)
  • Althought Ripbot264 doesn't work with DVD images and HandBreak does, I'd demonstrate the steps using prior since I had better results using it and I'd consider using handbreak only in mention case above.

And now to main part:
Download and install RipBot264 or from here. All necessary tools are included.
Open the program and click on ADD Browse to locate your video file, Ripbot264 will take up to few minutes to analyze the file.
Change Video Profile to Iphone and leave Audio Profile at AAC-LC 128. Leave Mode to 2-Pass, and kbps (the bitrate) - i found 256 works good, so I just encode all my movies at this rate, brave souls among you might want to try to go lower.
Select output file [UNC (\\) paths are not supported!]
Next Click on Properties and Select on Crop - Automatically.
Next step is very important and a bit tricky - Click on "Preview Script". Hopefully you have Media Player Classic installed and Configured to play AVS files.
Open Video Properties/Details and write down Video size [something like 720x480].
Divide the numbers - This is your aspect ratio and now divide 480 by that ratio. This is going to be your final video height.
Close MPC and select custom in Size field -> 480 in width and pick Height closest to number you got.
OK, Done and Start.
Add to Itunes and Sync - you done!

Enjoy