Shootout of Three iPod Video Converters--MoviePod vs Podner vs Video2Pod

If you want to watch videos on your new 5G iPod with video, they must be in the proper format. The iPod with video only plays MPEG4 and H.264 formats of all the video formats out there like MOV, DV, MPEG1, MPEG2, AVI, DVIX, ASF and WMV. Movies or music videos bought and downloaded from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) will be in the correct format but iTMS also offers video podcasts. Unfortunately, many video podcasts play okay in iTunes but are not in the proper format for the iPod with video. One may also have many QuickTime or Windows Media Player or Real Player videos that are also not compatible with the iPod with video.

Many videos compatible with QuickTime can be converted to MPEG4 or H.264 with QuickTime Pro 7.0.3 or iMovie HD or the open source application called ffmpeg. Following our hands-on review of the iPod with video, we posted a note that compared the performance of those three converters on a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4. iMovie and QuickTime were very slow and ffmpeg, while a bit faster is also a bit complex for the average user who just wants to convert some videos to run on their iPod with video.

Since then, at least three applications that automate the conversion process have been produced: Podner 1.1.1, Video2Pod 1.1.1 and MoviePod 1.0. Each costs about $10. They have different features but they all have simple graphical user interfaces, convert many video formats to MPEG4, batch process files and export the result to iTunes. Podner and Video2Pod are based on QuickTime and convert all QuickTime compatible files and support plugins for DVIX. Podner supports WMV with the Flip4Mac plugin. MoviePod converts ASF and WMV files without a plugin and it also supports QuickTime plugins like Podner and Video2Pod. But MoviePod does not presently convert videos to the new scalable H.264 format.

So how fast are they? We produced a short video test file in MOV format from the first four clips of iMovie's tutorial movie, some 28.5 seconds long. Then, we timed how long it took each application to convert the MOV file to MPEG4 at the applications' lowest quality setting and again at their highest quality setting. We also timed how long it took to convert the MOV file to H.264 at the highest setting in the two applications that can do it, Podner and Video2Pod. We conducted the tests on our 1.67GHz 17" PowerBook G4 and our new Power Mac G5 Quad running Mac OS X 10.4.3.

Here are the results using the PowerBook:

Speed Tests (sec) with 1.67GHz PowerBook G4

Test
Application	MPEG4 Low	MPEG4 High	H.264 High
MoviePod 1.0	8	12	-
Podner 1.1.1	14	14	81
Video2Pod 1.1.1	12	13	78

MoviePod is the speed champ in MPEG4 conversion, convincingly so at the lowest quality settings. However, MoviePod's results were very similar to Podner's and Video2Pod if its "Decode movies using QuickTime" option is checked. This may have some relation to quality that we will get to shortly. Podner and Video2Pod are very close in H.264 conversion times at their highest quality setting but Podner's highest quality also includes multi-pass. It is not clear whether Video2Pod's highest H.264 setting is single-pass or multi-pass.

Here are the results using the Power Mac G5 Quad:

Speed Tests (sec) with 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 Quad

Test
Application	MPEG4 Low	MPEG4 High	H.264 High
MoviePod 1.0	3	4	-
Podner 1.1.1	6	6	25
Video2Pod 1.1.1	5	6	23

Of course, the times are much faster than using the PowerBook, especially so for MoviePod, and the results are the same.

What about quality? Out of the eight converted videos, only the lowest quality of Video2Pod showed clear pixelation on our iPod with video. The other seven were virtually indistinguishable in quality. At "full screen" in a QuickTime window on our 30" Cinema Display, all showed extensive pixelation. However, the Podner highest quality H.264 was clearly the best, much better even than Video2Pod's highest quality H.264.

In summary, if one is converting videos to watch on an iPod with video, the fastest application with acceptable quality is probably the best. That title in this shootout goes to MoviePod. On the other hand, if one wants to use the converted video on a much larger screen and has the time, Podner's high quality multi-pass H.264 is the best. As we stated earlier, each application has a variety of different features, some of which may trump the speed advantage of MoviePod for some users. Each application has a demo/trial version so check them out. [Bill Fox]