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Video format standards got you down? Me, too!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I can’t be the only one who complains about the plethora of video formats these days. It’s a serious mess. Converting from one format and size to another, Mac or PC, iPhone or iPod, or wherever, is one royal pain. Fortunately, there are solutions. Unfortunately, each solution carries a little pain, too. Here’s one of my trusty solutions.
Reader Comments
fairings said:
You guys are right. It is getting more and more complicated.
Pecos Bill said:
Or, you could get Handbrake for free. Both use ffMPEG for the heavy lifting. VisualHub does improve on the GUI, I think. The one thing that VH appears to lack is the ability to set it up to process multiple conversions all at once (specifically, process it each time for each format; now that Flash does H.264, it would be good if exporting to iPod could do that compression then wrap it in an m4v and flv file type as those are just containers).
As for the advanced tab, the settings don’t appear all that complex. Sure, you could do something not-so-bright and make an iPod movie with a 20Mbps bitrate (max, IIRC is 1.5) but you might actually like some of the results better. If the result fails to work, you’ve only lost some time and some electricity.
Mark M. Florida said:
If you think VisualHub’s Advanced window is bewildering, download a copy of MPEG Streamclip and take a gander at its encoding options:
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
But it’s free, and very powerful, and with Perian installed it can open just about any video format and convert it for your iPod or iPhone or AppleTV with (fairly) little hassle.
Art said:
Video just seems more complicated than it needs to be. Framerates differ between TV and film and no one can agree on what, exactly, constitutes HD. Does the near-HD quality of video on AppleTV delight or suck? To some, it’s unwatchable. It’s not PURE HD, so therefore, it offends those who are obviously far more intelligent and discerning than the rest of us pulp eaters. To others, it’s so close to real life as to cause seizures and sudden death.
AppleTV is caught right in the middle of all this confusion. I’ve long ceased reading articles on ATV as it appears Apple has simultaneously released the anti-christ and the 2nd coming.
If you buy an ATV, make sure you pair it with VisualHub. I love VisualHub for its ability to simply make video play wherever I want it to play. You can make the video fit your 16:9 HD TV or your 2.5” iPod screen. You can even stitch your videos together so you don’t have to fumble with your iPod while you’re gasping for air on your treadmill. I really appreciate that the developers go out of their way to provide timely updates and always make sure it runs perfectly with iTunes.
The interface is kinda clumsy but this is one of those MUST HAVE apps.