XVID AVIs on iPod ... ?

[Xodarap]

IIRC (which I may not), iPods use H.264 -- what about standard XVID AVIs? Do I have to run them through x264 to make them iPod compatible? Can I just put them into .mp4 containers (what's the program, jambi?)?
I'm already assuming the QPel / GMC ones are useless; what about b-frames?

Whatever changes are necessary, can anyone recommend a program for a batch transfer? I have about 200 XVID movies and it would be a real pain to load them into the job queue of megui or virtualdub. (Does megui have a batch option?) If I do have to change them to H264 mp4s, though, I would prefer to be able to use avs plugins like temporalsmooth, in which case megui is probably my fastest option either way.

Anything else I'm missing on the subject? That's basically the dilemma: 200 or so XVID movies, of varying quality and encoding options, preferably made iPod compatible.

As a side, assuming that I have to move them over to H264 mp4s, does anyone have a good recommendation for an avs plugin deblocker (some of them are pretty blocky) that doesn't blur the image too badly? Or will x264's in-loop deblocking work decently for that?

[Xodarap]

Did this on another post, but I think it makes sense to bump. It's been a couple months without a response...

[HowlerX]

Most XviD movies have b-frames, so you can forget about it. The iPod doesn't support b-frames. You can still use XviD to encode movies, just no b-frames, no GMC, noQpel, and no custom matrices.

You could have done a short 30 second clip in about 2min and tested it on an iPod instead of having to wait over a month for a reply to your post.

Also: :search:

Seriously...

[Sirber]

Use search and MP4 container ;)

[Xodarap]

Apologies for the search thing. I feel like a technological moron whenever I try to use the forum search here. I do great when it comes to any other search engine, but I wind up wading through a hundred posts that have little or nothing to do with my particular problem. In this case, I'm sure search would have told me something about the XVID compatibility on iPod, but I couldn't find anything about batch re-encoding to AVC, which was also a major part of my query. Considering the difficulty involved in weeding out the compatible XVIDs from the incompatible ones, not to mention that AVC is higher quality, re-encoding all of my files seems to make the most sense.
I didn't put my question well, I know. It was late :P
Anyone have ideas for easy mass-reencoding?

[Xodarap]

You could have done a short 30 second clip in about 2min and tested it on an iPod instead of having to wait over a month for a reply to your post.



Whatever changes are necessary, can anyone recommend a program for a batch transfer?


I meant for that to be the main question, sorry...

One at a time, hundreds of files from XVID to AVC would take forever...

[foxyshadis]

MeGUI forces you to create an avs for each file. AutoMKV and Staxrip, however, will happily encode directly a batch of avi files, taking care of the rest internally; StaxRip is very particular about system/plugin configuration, so I don't use it, but its batch encoding mode is much simpler than AutoMKV's, where you still have to load and queue each file, even if it only takes a few seconds each.

[colemar]

IIRC (which I may not), iPods use H.264 -- what about standard XVID AVIs? Do I have to run them through x264 to make them iPod compatible? Can I just put them into .mp4 containers (what's the program, jambi?)?
I'm already assuming the QPel / GMC ones are useless; what about b-frames?

I tried remuxing XVID AVIs to MP4 container (note: no re-encode) with any tool I could think of, and the only one that did the job right for my Ipod Classic is FFMPEG.
Something like
ffmpeg -i input.avi -vcodec copy -acodec libfaac output.mp4
We need to encode audio with libfaac because Ipod demands AAC audio.
As for b-frames, Ipod does not like them and I think this could be the reason for some flickering I noticed.

[numaios]

I tried remuxing XVID AVIs to MP4 container with any tool I could think of, and the only one that did the job right for my Ipod Classic is FFMPEG.Didn't YAMB work? It's really easy to use and very effective.