Want to watch your favourite movies on your iPod or mobile phone ? (Great for long journeys) And are you a Linux user ? Read on.
(Windows / Mac users might as well use the software that comes with the mobile phone / iPod)
Most of the phones / iPods play videos in MPEG – 4 format and sounds in AAC format. So, all we we need to do is to convert a video into MPEG – 4 with sound encoded as AAC.
Step 1: Get ffmpeg code
According to the ffmpeg project website, “SVN snapshots work really well 99% of the time so people are not afraid to use them”. So, we checkout their SVN repository
$ svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
Step 2: Compile
Before compiling, we need to set proper compile options.
$ cd ffmpeg/
$ ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-liba52 --enable-libgsm --disable-debug --enable-shared --enable-libfaac --prefix=/usr/local
Now, compile
$ make
$ sudo make install
Step 3: Convert
Convert the video file of your choice to the MPEG -4 / AAC format.
$ ffpeg -i some_video.avi -s 320x240 -ab 32000 -b 64000 output.mp4
- 320×240 is the screen size for my mobile phone (Nokia 6233) and for a standard iPod (I think)
- -ab 32000 signifies the the output audio bitrate.(32 kbits/s)
- -b 64000 signifies the output video bitrate (64 kbits/s)
You can experiment with the two features above. I found these to be the ideal values, the opposing factors being quality and file size.
You can use the following command for a Widescreen format movie. (16:9 types)
$ ffpeg -i some_video.avi -s 320x180 -padtop 30 -padbottom 30 -ab 32000 -b 64000 output.mp4
Suppose the audio doesn’t get encoded in AAC format by default, one can also try adding the option -acodec libfaac or -acodec aac.
Step 4: Transfer
Transfer the the output video to your phone / iPod and enjoy!
Prasanna Ramaswamy is doing his B Tech in IIT Madras. He likes his music, photography, astronomy and uses GNU/Linux.
A very nice and useful tutorial
A question, does on have to use the svn version? Would an existing build work?
A clarification, is it ffpeg or ffmpeg? (the cmd line tool)
And finally, thanks! Finally, I’ll be able to put movies onto my IPod.
Hey, nice post. But, you can as well switch to an open source OS for your IPod. I use Rockbox on my Ipod and i don’t need to convert anything to AAC for it to work. The loading into the IPod takes very less time and very much works like a Flash memory, the OS is exactly like any distro with a lot of options. Just google it and read about it if you have the patience, MAC OS X is good, but I think this is equally good.