Preparing for The Touch: Testing Handbrake

Yesterday I ordered a new 32GB iPod Touch.

I could not resist it. I sold my old Touch and my old Apple TV, and upgraded to the 32GB model. With HD video captures, and the new Retina display, it looks great. And according to Apple, it will display:

H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

Which means that my old handbrake settings may now be obsolete. I have always tried to maintain settings that would allow video to be played across all of my iOS devices, iPods/iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs. Previously that meant that I needed to start with the iPod preset in Handbrake, and make adjustments.

With this new HD capable iPod, I suspect I can start with the Apple TV preset. I won’t know until I get the iPod Touch, but I have made a couple of test files. These files loaded and played on my iPad and iPhone 3GS.

I ripped the first Transformers movie with the Apple TV preset into two files. On one I left “large file size” checked, on the other I removed that. I added “iPod 5G Support”.

There was no discernable difference, either in file size or quality.

Both files were exactly the same size. I have no idea what “Large File Size” does. Both files were significantly smaller than my universal settings, using that yielded a file at 3.38 GB. Oddly, this larger file will play on all iOS devices, while the one I ripped yesterday will only play on “HD” capable ones. This is primarily to do with the percentage of constant quality I select in the universal files. I found I liked the higher percentage of 65%, more than the preset 60%. Anything over 65% ends up with a huge files. But as you can see, the 60% mark produces much smaller files.

I took a couple of screen captures of these last two rips. The compression artifacts that you see are in every version I have ripped with every setting. The combination of dark with smoke does not compress well. But, you can also see that either version delivers the same compression artifacts. Both load onto an iPad and my iPhone 3GS. I assume they will load onto the new iPod Touch. They will not load onto older iPods or older iPhones.

You can see the smoke artifacts here:

A general action shot with light and dark:

I was very pleased with it’s performance on the iPad. The image looked great. Now that the iPods/iPhones have the ability to play higher quality video files, I may switch to the Apple TV preset all the time. I know I won’t be able to watch them on my wife’s 4th Gen Nano, but with an iPod, iPad, an iPhone 3GS and an Apple TV that can play them, I don’t think I will miss it.

My goal has been great looking video, with decent file sizes. The Apple TV preset, adding the “iPod 5G support” gives me both on all of the “HD” capable iOS devices, as well as the Apple TV.

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