How to get video onto your iPhone (and iPod)

One thing that I've been remiss at using on iPhone is video. With the exception of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (which I purchased for "reaserch" when the iTunes Store began selling movies) and an episode each of 30 Rock and The Dave Chappelle Show my iPods and now my iPhone have pretty much remained devoid of video content.

iPhone has the exact same video specs as the 5.5 generation iPods:

• 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
• H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
• MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

There are three easy ways to get your own video onto iPhone (and iPod) sans iTunes Store.

1. The first option is the free HandBrake. If you want to rip a DVD to the iPhone, just click on Handbrake’s HB-IPOD setting in the right window. As the excellent 2aDay tutorial points out, you'll need to click the "Picture" setting and check "Keep Aspect Ratio" and uncheck "Anamorphic (PAR)."

You can also set the bit rate to 620, frame rate to 24 and reduce the video width to 480. I also set the audio to 96kpbs. I can rip a normal DVD in about 40 minutes running at 90+ fps.

2. My personal favorite video converter is Techspansion's Visual Hub (US$23.32) which converts any file in three steps to iPhone, iPod, PSP, DV, DVD, Tivo, AVI, MP4, WMV, MPEG and Flash. It doesn't get much easier than that. There's even an option to stitch videos together and to parallel process the conversion process across multiple Macs using Apple's Xgrid technology.

3. Apple's own QuickTime Pro (US$30) now features a new "Movie to iPhone" setting. QT Pro allows you to export any file playable in QuickTime Player to a format optimized for iPhone, iPod, Apple TV (or a variety of other devices). Just open the file in QuickTime 7 Pro, select "Export" from the File menu and choose your destination in the Export drop-down menu.

I've had limited luck with QT Pro though. A couple of files would export properly with the "Movies to iPhone (cellular)" setting, but they wouldn't work with the regular "Movies to iPhone" setting.

What video content is on your iPhone?