Video Format between iPods

[RickMz]

Thanks in advance for your help.

We are an iPod family (40 GB Apple TV, 60 and 80 GB Video, iPhone, and 2G (4GB) and 3G (8GB) Nanos). I have noticed some of the videos I have encoded over time are not compatible (according to iTunes, so they won't transfer) with some of the other video iPods....:o

Is there a video compression format that is "ideal" (i.e. will play on all) for all of the above video-capable Apple items? :confused:

[Harbinger]

If using Handbrake, use the iPod Hi-Rez option with 2-Pass and Turbo enabled.

If you're encoding from non-DVD source, just don't go over 640x480 resolution and be sure to keep the bitrate under 1500kbps. Using h.264 MP4 will give you better looking quality at a smaller file size, but it takes forever to encode.

Here's the video spec straight from Apple:
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

Both the AppleTV and iPhone can do "better" video but you'll lose backward compatibility, the ability to affectively stream the video, and gain file size over arguably negligible video quality improvement.

Hope that helps.
Good luck!