Cartoon for your video iPod

October 23, 2005 | General, Toys and Gadgets | By: Mark VandeWettering

I took one of the Superman cartoons available from archive.org and tried various command line tools to make a version that would play on the iPod video. I seemed to have a bit of trouble getting ffmpeg to write a .mp4 file that Quicktime/iTunes liked, so eventually I used ffmpeg to write a raw .m4v video file, encoded the audio separately with faac, and then used mp4creator, part of the mpeg4ip tools to combine them, hint and optimize them. It seemed to work.

Here’s the tracks in the file…

[fishtank] % mp4info super.mp4
mp4info version 1.3
super.mp4:
Track   Type    Info
1       video   MPEG-4 Simple @ L1, 614.881 secs, 192 kbps, 320x240 @ 29.970027 fps
2       audio   MPEG-4 AAC LC, 614.741 secs, 62 kbps, 48000 Hz
3       hint    Payload MP4V-ES for track 1
4       hint    Payload mpeg4-generic for track 2
 Metadata Tool: mp4creator 1.3

I believe that these are the commands that I ran:

ffmpeg -i superman_the_mechanical_monsters.mpeg -an -vcodec mpeg4 -b 192 -s 320×240 -pass 1 super.m4v
ffmpeg -i superman_the_mechanical_monsters.mpeg -an -vcodec mpeg4 -b 192 -s 320×240 -pass 2 super.m4v
ffmpeg -i superman_the_mechanical_monsters.mpeg -vn super.wav
faac –mpeg-vers 4 -b 64 -o super.aac super.wav
mp4creator -r 29.97 -c super.m4v super.mp4
mp4creator -r 29.97 -c super.aac super.mp4
mp4creator -hint=1 super.mp4
mp4creator -hint=2 super.mp4
mp4creator -optimize super.mp4

The net result: this video file. It’s a little blocky, but should play well on your video ipod. Let me know how it works out.

Comments

Comment from indiworks
Time 10/23/2005 at 8:24 pm

hello, i hope this comment is not too long…

i posted these h.264 settings for final cut or qtamateur on the ilounge forum, after one of their readers had successfully tested our video on his new ipod. maybe someone will find this useful…

*** begin (shortened) forum post (20.10.2005) ***

“h.264 export settings (via final cut express or qtamateur) for a working (!) ipod mp4”

in fce (but this can also be done via “qtamateur”!)

export > using quicktime conversion > as format choose “mpeg-4”, click “options”

for “file format” (top of the window) now choose “mp4” (an n o t “mp4 (isma)” since this one does not give you the h.264 option!)
video format: “h.264”
data rate: (i tried the “ipod maximum”) “750 kbits/sec”
image size: “320 x 240 qvga”
frame rate: “30”
key frame every 24 frames (default)

now click “video options…”:

here i changed the default setting “restrict profile(s) to:” from “main” (now deactivated!) to “baseline” (now activated!). i do not exactly know what this does and if it is important at all! i did it because the apple “videopodcasts” tutorial mentioned ipod support for “Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3″… but i can tell you that your h.264 encoded movie will work on an ipod using these options…

ok, back to the other options (still in the “h.264 video options” window):

encoding mode: i chose “best quality (multi-pass)”. now click “ok”.

you are back to the main “mp4 export settings” window. last thing to do: change from the “video” to the “audio” tab and change (!) the “output sample rate” from “44,100 khz” to “48,000 khz” (!), (i left the rest to its default settings: audio format: aac-lc (music), data rate: 128 kbps, channels: stereo, encoding quality: better).

i also did not activate/change the “streaming” tab and back in the video tab i left the “optimized for” option to “download”.

if you don’t have qt pro you can use “qtamateur”: file > batch export…

*** end (shortened) forum post (20.10.2005) ***