Originally Posted by NumbLock

Originally Posted by Checkpoint

Originally Posted by NumbLock

Yep, but as far as I can tell not 1281.

Mkay, but here's another question. If the video resolution is 1280x544, will the edges of the video be chopped off or no? Basically, will it fit perfectly fine showing all aspects of the video or not, is what I'm asking.

No, there are two kinds of black bars: One that is just because the iPad isn't HD, and one that you force by encoding wrong.

If you encode right, you can double-tap the screen to force the video to zoom to full screen. Its a really cool feature if you've encoded right.

How do you encode it correctly to do this?

Originally Posted by rowan

NumbLock, you get a gold star and two desserts for dinner!

FYI: When the software you're using puts in the black bars, either top/bottom (letterboxing) or left/right (pillarboxing) it's trying to force a display for a different sized output device (widescreen movie on a standard def tv, for example) but the iPad has more smarts and so any black bars just don't help because the iPad will deal with it. Numblock found you can't zoom with the black bars and the reason is the iPad thinks the video includes those bars (well, it does include them because they got hard coded into the video).

I'd also say most software I use lets you keep the original aspect ratio in tact, which would be the ideal way to convert a movie, unless it's too wide.

So long as you follow Numblock's recommendation of 1280 pixels max width, it doesn't matter too much what ratio you have because the iPad can always display it, and if it's smaller than what it can display, you'll have the option to zoom.

Awesome, this sounds great! I've downloaded so many videos from torrent's that are BRRip's and they're all mostly in 1280x544 resolution and for the past week I've been trying to decrease the resolution to 1024x768 since I thought that was the max resolution for videos on the iPad.

Thanks for all this help by the way, guys. And thank you, Numblock, for this excellent information.

Originally Posted by NumbLock

Originally Posted by Matth3w

You tried Nero Recode on your DVD?

Actually no. I couldn't find it. Is it called something else now? I was all over Nero's website and - nothing.

It's part of the suite. I don't think you can download it separate.

Checkbox, just like Rowan said: Choose the output file as a percentage of the input file instead trying to set a fixed resolution. If you enter a fixed resolution, the conversion SW will put in black bars to force that aspect ratio instead of allowing the iPad to do it for you.

Rowan explained it much better than I just did.

Originally Posted by Matth3w

It's part of the suite. I don't think you can download it separate.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll give it another try...there must be something reliable.

Thanks! I spend hours trying to convert a HD file and do not lose any quality. I bought a long time ago AirVideo App (For iPhone, and now supports iPad), which does a pretty impressive Video Stream, and does Convert HD file on computer very well. You can convert with it, and than transfer to iPad, and the resolution is great, as the Quality.

MKV File - 22:42 - 1280x720 - 558mb
After Convertion using AirVideo
M4V File - 22:42 - 1024x576 - 381mb

And the quality it's really good. I will try maximize the resolution for the next time.

I try Xilisoft Video Convert, to convert without resize the resolution, but the file size has double. I tried convert to HD h.264 MP4

Originally Posted by BcBruno

Thanks! I spend hours trying to convert a HD file and do not lose any quality. I bought a long time ago AirVideo App (For iPhone, and now supports iPad), which does a pretty impressive Video Stream, and does Convert HD file on computer very well. You can convert with it, and than transfer to iPad, and the resolution is great, as the Quality.

MKV File - 22:42 - 1280x720 - 558mb
After Convertion using AirVideo
M4V File - 22:42 - 1024x576 - 381mb

And the quality it's really good. I will try maximize the resolution for the next time.

I try Xilisoft Video Convert, to convert without resize the resolution, but the file size has double. I tried convert to HD h.264 MP4

Cool tip! I saw that you can somehow add it to iTunes automatically. Is that before or after conversion? I didn't quite get that part.

Wow! Amazing post. Thanks!

Thanks for all the work NumbLock, appreciated.

Nice post Numblock, truly appreciate the work that's gone in.

I've gone ahead to use Format Factory as well, I like it very much, my only gripe is that it's slow (having used Xilisoft Ultimate Video Converter as well which allows for the use of a multi-core processor to do your conversions faster - works great for me as I have a quad core). Do you know if there's a setting in Format Factory that allows for multi-core? Or any other tool that is FREE but with multi-core support?

Also for Format Factory, based on your recommendations what seems to be working great for me is:

Type: MP4
Codec: H264 (AVC)
Bitrate: 2400
FPS: 24
Resolution: 1280x720

For the sound I do a sound boost, since the iPad's speakers are a bit tiny, so I increase the DB by 10-16, you can always bring it down later

Cheers,

The native resolution of the iPad is actually 1024x768 so encoding a video to 1280x720 (720p) for the iPad is unnecessary as the player has to downsize the video to play it.

At 1280x720 the aspect ratio(AR) of the movie is a perfect 16:9. Unfortunately it is now extremely rare to find any movie which conforms to that aspect ratio. I now find movies having ARs of anything from 40:17 to 80:33 to 640:267.

If you force your video converter to encode a 1080p movie with an AR of say 640:267 to fit into a resolution of 1280x720 at an AR of 16:9, you will find the Converter filling black bars above and below the movie images. This causes your final file to be larger than necessary and giving more data for the video player to process in order to play it. And remember that the iPad video player has to again downsize the movie to fit the 1024x768 resolution of the device. All these are unnecessary overheads for the A4 processor to handle.

My video conversion workflow goes something like this…

First I would determine the actual resolution of the movie which at 720p can be something like 1726x720. So in order to fit into the landscape width of the iPad (1024), the height has to be 427.2.

I then use AVS Video converter to create a custom profile as follows:

Video Codec:H.264/AVC
Frame Size: 1024x427
Bitrate: 2400
Frame Rate: 24fps
Audio: 48000 Hz at 320kbps.

Using a 3GHz Quad Core, it takes about an hour to convert a 4.7Gb 720p MKV video to a 1024x427 iPad friendly MP4 video which tips the scale at around 2Gb to 2.5Gb in size.

Test the resulting file in QuickTime and you will see the video tightly bounded within the player without any black bars above and below the movie.

Just my personal experience and I thought I’d share this here.

Cheers.