DVD to the iPod iTouch (or iPhone)

Hiya Just picked up an iTouch for my wife for our anniversary and seeking tips on conversion tips/optimization. Giving it to her tonight, thought I'd have a few movies copied from her DVDs ready to be put into the iTouch.

While waiting for your thoughtful words I'll use the "iPod" option but I assume that the video will be compressed for a 2" 4:3 vs. the iTouch 3.5" widescreen format which I would rather maintain.

Update: screen resolution of the iTouch is 480×320 pixels at 163 ppi (1.5 aspect ratio) and the default option in the "DVD to Mobile - iPod" secction is 320x240 (1.33 aspect ratio). Closest frame resolution I can get in the settings is 592x384 (1.541 aspect ratio) ... guess I'll try that?

That should work well if the device will accept it. Does it take AVIs or just MP4s? And what kind of audio format does it like?

Hey Signals, thanks for your thoughts.

Specs are here: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html and I am hoping to maximize audio (wife has cochlear implant) so I bumped DVDFab output to 128 Kbps (max?) and maintained closed captioning option. Doesn't look like it takes *.avi but it does take *.mov (is that Windows movie format?)

Audio
Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV

Video
H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

Sounds just like the iPod5.5G profile in Generic/Ipod. Looks like it will not take the video bitrate that an iPod will, but I would experiment with that. At 640x480 pixels, see if at least 2500 kbps will work. You can also set the Volume to 150-200% for a little extra boom. Hope it works! And congrats on the anniversary. 36 years and counting here.

I've converted several with great success and the wife is really pleased! (yea!)

Settings I used: (ipod.default)
576x400 (1.54 aspect ratio ... made it a little "taller" than 592x384)
Fixed bitrate (this ok?) ~970 kbps
Audio 128kbps, 150% boost (good hint!)

Now to tweak it and really knock her socks off *evillaf* Looking at your last post, I took a look at the ipod.h265-5.5G settings, where the frame resolution can be expanded to 640x480 (1.333 aspect ratio). From the specs, the screen size is 480x320 (1.5 aspect ratio) but will support up to 640x480 (1.33 aspect ratio). That confuses me a bit (won't the higher res picture become slightly distorted during conversion?). 2nd question (dumb noob!) is why would I adjust the video bitrate? (currently 970, you suggest 2500 which nearly triples file size). Doesn't framerate (29.97 fps) control video quality?

Hi rambunctious. The frame rate is how often the screen is redrawn which is important (pictures look jerky on some players if it's too low), but in my experience the video bitrate has more impact on the lack of graininess and amount of detail in the picture. Bitrate, frame rate and screen size setting will all impact conversion speed and file size. I can see a difference on my Archos with the higher bit rate settings, and it is really obvious if you plug your device into a TV to watch something. I'm not sure how the iPod deals with oversize pictures--I would expect it would just shrink them down or crop them without changing the aspect ratio of the original.

Hello,

How do I change the specs in the settling to 640x480? I am quite new to all this and need a bit of help here.

thanks

All these settings are on the Configure screen. To access it, look for the Configure button after you click Next.

Thanks a lot. Am now trying out all these settings and will tell you what works best! Thanks again. It is very much appreciated.