I just downloaded this. The quality looks good, but the aspect ratio doesn't...people with thin/long heads.
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Ideal Video Format?
- Thread starter missin44
- Start date
I just downloaded this. The quality looks good, but the aspect ratio doesn't...people with thin/long heads.
The.Dark.God
New Member
I just wanted to chime in here, as I've been struggling with getting exactly the right settings for my Droid videos but finally hit on the correct formula to take advantage of the entire screen and high quality. Most of what I've seen so far converts things decently, but you end up with the black bars because of the difference in aspect ratio between the film and the Droid, and also a slight bit of "scrunch" to the picture where people aren't quite the right shape.
I use Handbrake for the conversion. Make sure you are saving as .M4V (obviously). Select the "iPhone & iPod Touch" preset as a starting point.
Width/Height: 854 480 ("None" for Anamorphic)
Select "Custom" crop. For any movies where the source is in 2.35:1 aspect ratio (many films), use whatever Top and Bottom values Handbrake fills in (Handbrake calculates the black bar size/placement and fills these in), and replace the Left/Right values with 90. 90 is an approximate value, I find it looks correct on every 2.35:1 movie I have converted so far but results could vary.
This has the effect of converting your movie to fit the Droid's screen resolution exactly, with no black bars, and crops the outer edges of the film off so that the people are not distorted. You will lose the outer 90 pixels on each side of the screen, but it is generally not noticed (nowhere near as severe a crop as going to 4:3 or something) and is comparable to using the zoom feature on a 16:9 HDTV to eliminate the bars.
*Note: If your film is true 16:9, you don't need to alter the crop settings. Most films these days are not true 16:9 but you may encounter a few.
Under the Video tab, use target file size as 750 MB. You could probably go even smaller, but this seems to preserve virtually all the quality of the film. If you don't set a target size and use the default 59% quality, the movie file comes out between 1.5-2.25 GB, and the Droid seems unable to play anything 2 GB or over.
Audio Tab, I select the 5.1 track from the DVD rip, and convert to AAC Stereo 44.1 khz 160 bitrate. Sounds great through the external speaker and fantastic through headphones.
I hope you find this info useful, I've done a dozen films so far on my Droid and they turn out awesome.
I use Handbrake for the conversion. Make sure you are saving as .M4V (obviously). Select the "iPhone & iPod Touch" preset as a starting point.
Width/Height: 854 480 ("None" for Anamorphic)
Select "Custom" crop. For any movies where the source is in 2.35:1 aspect ratio (many films), use whatever Top and Bottom values Handbrake fills in (Handbrake calculates the black bar size/placement and fills these in), and replace the Left/Right values with 90. 90 is an approximate value, I find it looks correct on every 2.35:1 movie I have converted so far but results could vary.
This has the effect of converting your movie to fit the Droid's screen resolution exactly, with no black bars, and crops the outer edges of the film off so that the people are not distorted. You will lose the outer 90 pixels on each side of the screen, but it is generally not noticed (nowhere near as severe a crop as going to 4:3 or something) and is comparable to using the zoom feature on a 16:9 HDTV to eliminate the bars.
*Note: If your film is true 16:9, you don't need to alter the crop settings. Most films these days are not true 16:9 but you may encounter a few.
Under the Video tab, use target file size as 750 MB. You could probably go even smaller, but this seems to preserve virtually all the quality of the film. If you don't set a target size and use the default 59% quality, the movie file comes out between 1.5-2.25 GB, and the Droid seems unable to play anything 2 GB or over.
Audio Tab, I select the 5.1 track from the DVD rip, and convert to AAC Stereo 44.1 khz 160 bitrate. Sounds great through the external speaker and fantastic through headphones.
I hope you find this info useful, I've done a dozen films so far on my Droid and they turn out awesome.
Black bars will happen if the AR of the movie is not exactly 1.77 : 1. What movie are you converting?
Spy Game, The Dark Knight, most, if not all of my movies are wide screen format. Trying to find a way to use the full Droid screen in Catalyst 3....without cutting parts of the picture out.
How-to encode good videos for Droid:
1) Download latest version of HandBrake
2) Start with the iPod Legacy preset and create a copy (add button). Call it "Droid" or something.
3) Go into the user_presets.xml file is creates and edit it.
(On XP, this is in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\HandBrake\)
4) Edit average bitrate from 1500 to less than 1000 (700-800 is good) and AAC audio from 160, to 128 or 96. Remove analyze=all: (keep one : between other parameters). Save file.
This will give good compatibility and decent file size to your encodes. There is no reason to go up to 1500 avg bitrate on a movie only 848x480 at best. 1000 is more than enough for transparent quality and could probably go even lower. Using CRF 22-23 instead of a set bitrate is okay too. The iPod-Legacy preset works fine, but the files are bigger than they need to be.
Make sure you choose other appropriate settings as necessary, such as de-telecine film, etc.
Sizing:
If you are using a HD or Blu-ray source, lower width to 848. The reason you shouldn't use 854 is because it is not divisible by 16 (compression works better this way.) Handbrake should remove top/bottom black borders on 1.85 or 2.35 AR material appropriately. Yes, the video will still show them during playback, but you don't want to encode them. For 1:77 material, it should end up a perfect 848x480 video. For 4:3 video, set height to 480 and let HandBrake choose the width. You will get side black bars during playback, which is okay (AR is correct).
For DVD or native sources smaller than 854 wide, set either Width (to 720 for DVD) or Height to 480 and let Handbrake choose the other dimension. If the source video is smaller than both 854(H) and 480(W), leave it be. Don't re-size it bigger.
And finally, download and buy Act 1 Video Player. It's worth it.
1) Download latest version of HandBrake
2) Start with the iPod Legacy preset and create a copy (add button). Call it "Droid" or something.
3) Go into the user_presets.xml file is creates and edit it.
(On XP, this is in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\HandBrake\)
4) Edit average bitrate from 1500 to less than 1000 (700-800 is good) and AAC audio from 160, to 128 or 96. Remove analyze=all: (keep one : between other parameters). Save file.
This will give good compatibility and decent file size to your encodes. There is no reason to go up to 1500 avg bitrate on a movie only 848x480 at best. 1000 is more than enough for transparent quality and could probably go even lower. Using CRF 22-23 instead of a set bitrate is okay too. The iPod-Legacy preset works fine, but the files are bigger than they need to be.
Make sure you choose other appropriate settings as necessary, such as de-telecine film, etc.
Sizing:
If you are using a HD or Blu-ray source, lower width to 848. The reason you shouldn't use 854 is because it is not divisible by 16 (compression works better this way.) Handbrake should remove top/bottom black borders on 1.85 or 2.35 AR material appropriately. Yes, the video will still show them during playback, but you don't want to encode them. For 1:77 material, it should end up a perfect 848x480 video. For 4:3 video, set height to 480 and let HandBrake choose the width. You will get side black bars during playback, which is okay (AR is correct).
For DVD or native sources smaller than 854 wide, set either Width (to 720 for DVD) or Height to 480 and let Handbrake choose the other dimension. If the source video is smaller than both 854(H) and 480(W), leave it be. Don't re-size it bigger.
And finally, download and buy Act 1 Video Player. It's worth it.
Last edited:
Did you find the user_presets.xml file?Where are you seeing the analyze=all at? I;m unable to find it.
And it has a newer version of x264 baked in, so the quality should be better.Well sweet...a 'new' version of HandBrake. After downloading and trying a couple movies/tv shows with your proposed settings, the rips are looking great...and taking less time than the previous version of HB I was running (0.9.3).
Normally, I am not a fan of HandBrake but it works well for this application. I prefer HDConvertToX as the best x264 front-end available, but is has more bells and whistles than is necessary for converting video to the Droid.
Last edited:
I'm hoping to see a SageTV Placeshifter client for the Droid!FYI - I am recording TV shows using sageTV (MPEG2 format). These are the files I am trying to convert. My goal is to use DVRMSToolBox (DTb) to convert the recorded tv to Droid watchable. DTb has a profile for iPhone, but the resulting files are inconsistent at best. I will try to up the bitrate and see what happens.......
Brian10956
New Member
What setting to fill the screen
I just used a free software Pazera to convert a movie to a MP4 file it sounds great and looks good but it doesn't fill the screen. I have a black bar about 1/3" on either side of the picture
The settings I'm using are:
852x480 resolution- HD480
MP4(h.264/ACC)
Birate 1500
FPS 30
The MP4 of Die Hard is 1.2 GB if it also possible to have a smaller good quality file with a different setting let me know and I would also like to fill the screen without the bars
Thanks for any help you can give me
I just used a free software Pazera to convert a movie to a MP4 file it sounds great and looks good but it doesn't fill the screen. I have a black bar about 1/3" on either side of the picture
The settings I'm using are:
852x480 resolution- HD480
MP4(h.264/ACC)
Birate 1500
FPS 30
The MP4 of Die Hard is 1.2 GB if it also possible to have a smaller good quality file with a different setting let me know and I would also like to fill the screen without the bars
Thanks for any help you can give me
Last edited:
D
dvdcatalyst
Guest
Does anyone knows how to used the handbrake for the droid?
thank
Most people just pick the iPhone profile in Handbrake, and change the screensize to 848x480, and use a video quality of 1000-1200 or so.
Look through this forum thread for details.
There is another thread with settings for Handbrake here as well.
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-audio-video/2024-i-found-good-video-converter-droid.html
Brian10956
New Member
Tools4movies
I just purchased on line Tools4Movies it was only $10.00 and I just did a complete conversion to a MP4 format of Master & Commander a 2.7 hour long movie. I have a old slow XP laptop and it took 2:45 to go from a copy protected DVD. The Tools 4Movie software has a setting for the Droid and it is easy to do and the quality is better than the Handbrake I was using. I am getting a new computer in a few weeks and I'm hoping it will be faster. The movie is taking up almost a gig of space but as I'll be copying all of my MP4's to a DVD for storage then shuffling a handful to the Driod it wont be a problem. I was really surprised by the improvement in quality over the all the other conversion software I've tried and again for 10 bucks you can't beat the price
I do have a question for you how do you put a name on the video, in the Droid I currently made a directory on the 16 gig card for movies and all I see when I open the directory in Gallery is a snapshot of the first frame (I Think?) of each movie. Do I need to put each MP4 in its own directory?
I just purchased on line Tools4Movies it was only $10.00 and I just did a complete conversion to a MP4 format of Master & Commander a 2.7 hour long movie. I have a old slow XP laptop and it took 2:45 to go from a copy protected DVD. The Tools 4Movie software has a setting for the Droid and it is easy to do and the quality is better than the Handbrake I was using. I am getting a new computer in a few weeks and I'm hoping it will be faster. The movie is taking up almost a gig of space but as I'll be copying all of my MP4's to a DVD for storage then shuffling a handful to the Driod it wont be a problem. I was really surprised by the improvement in quality over the all the other conversion software I've tried and again for 10 bucks you can't beat the price
I do have a question for you how do you put a name on the video, in the Droid I currently made a directory on the 16 gig card for movies and all I see when I open the directory in Gallery is a snapshot of the first frame (I Think?) of each movie. Do I need to put each MP4 in its own directory?
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