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exporting for IPOD – FCP vs. Compressor
Hey all,
I’m running FCP 5.1.4. We’ve recently developed a need to provide and ipod verson of our material. I’ve discovered that there is a size difference when exporting to ipod from the timeline (via quicktime conversion), and exporting a quicktime and then running that through Compressor. FCP spits it out at 640 x 432, and Compressor does 320 x 240. Is 320 x 240 fine? I’m not current on the ipod world.
Thanks.
Nick
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9 Replies
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Use the 640×480, many people will also watch iPod Videos ether on the computer or they hook up the iPod to a TV to watch. 640×480 will book much better on a computer or TV then 320×240 will. Also with the upcoming Apple TV many more people will be sending content from iTunes to the TV.
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Compressor can do both sizes. Just change the radio button in the Encoder pane of the Inspector. Then save as a custom preset for future use. Crank the bit rate up to the max of 1500kbs if you want really nice picture quality.
The 320 size looks fine on an iPod screen, but if you hook the iPod or the computer up to a monitor its pretty gnarly looking.
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What size and bit-rate are the TV shows and movies that you download from iTunes?
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iTunes TV shows started out as 320×240. That’s what the iPod screens are. At that time, that’s what Quicktime exported when you picked “Export to iPod.”
Now that they started selling movies and AppleTV, they raised the content on the iTunes Store to 640×480. Likewise, Quicktime’s “Export to iPod” changed at this point too.
As others have said, I’d go with the 640 option unless drive space is a huge concern.
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Thanks everyone – helpful info.
Nick
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There is also a tutorial on kenstone.net about exporting to IPod.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ipod_compressor_kenlon.html
Doug Olin
Desert Vistas Multimedia -
Very interesting. So, I guess download times as well as file sizes went way up.
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[Chris Babbitt] “What size and bit-rate are the TV shows and movies that you download from iTunes?
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I checked a few of them on my computer, and they seem to be slightly above what is possible in Compressor….1500 is the max in Compressor. The ones I looked at were 1564 and 1580.
I am pretty sure Apple is using a hardware encoder for their iTunes Store material.
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That’s very interesting, and it makes sense, because the rumor is that Apple is planning to include hardware H.264 encoding into it’s future machines.
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