H.264 vs. MPEG-4: ROUND ONE... FIGHT!

here at the invincibles, we like to think that we're up on all the latest trends; so we jumped into h.264 feet first when apple made the big switcheroo with quicktime 7. we nodded sagely when they later announced the specs for the video enabled ipod, smug in our early adoption of the latest and greatest codec of choice.

the new ipods, despite claims to the contrary, simply won't play videos encoded using h.264, unless they are exported from quicktime 7.0.3 using the "movie to ipod" option.

now, there's nothing wrong with this, at least in theory, but the reality is that option won't allow for adjusting the encoding settings in any way. unable to set a cap for the data rate, an exported "for ipod" movie is more than twice the size of the files we've been producing. that's not so good for the bandwidth.

stranger still is the fact that videos encoded using a wide variety of mpeg-4 settings seem to play just fine on the new ipods (myriad props to nick for helping verify this).

fortunately for us, we didn't want to leave our technologically challenged pals out in the cold, and have continued providing mpeg-4 encoded videos all along. so, in response to this recent discovery, we've switched the default videos in our itunes feed to the mpeg-4 versions.

personally, i like h.264, and would prefer to use it - the files are smaller with higher quality video than an mpeg-4 encoded at comparable data rates. if only apple could make it work with adjustable settings... but, if they want to send us a pair of new ipods, we'd be happy to test whatever new codecs they throw at us. seriously.