Bustikated

A quick screencast I made for the basic handbrake config.

You can find the latest tech specs for the iPod & the iPhone via Google or Apple.

Video Settings

I am a quality snob. I like to hook my iPod up to my 42” tv & watch videos. I use a 1500 kbps target video bit rate. This is an average, not a constant measurement of bitrate.

Also, I try to keep the videos as big as possible. The max resolution the iPod can handle is 640×480 (SD). I suggest enabling keep aspect ratio and shrinking your video so that it is no bigger. This is really only important if you plan on watching the videos on an iPod/iPhone.

Audio Settings

160 kbps AAC is also the highest quality supported by the iPod, and thus it is my default audio bitrate. 128 kbps generally sounds fine to me, but I wouldn’t go any lower than that.

Other Stuff

Subtitles

I have ripped a few videos with subtitles, and they play well in iTunes but I haven’t tried to transfer any to my iPod yet. Seeing as the iPhone and iPod support them, I can’t see any issue with turning them on.

Chapters

I can’t really see any reason to NOT enable the chapters, this lets you jump rapidly between sections of the video. iTunes, iPods, iPhones, and Quicktime Player all support video with chapters.

Details

The settings that I use are the max that the iPod can handle, and they typically look great. However, the tradeoff is ripping time. I get about 70fps avg on my MacBook Pro. YMMV, greatly. File size is also a big concern, the output video is around 500 MB per hour.

Disclaimer

Only use your powers of DVD ripping for good, and never evil.