I would love to have folks comment here if they have a video podcast that meets the specs. When I tested some podcasts with AppleTV, several did not fit squarely on the big screen. Some of those that did fit were: TikiBarTV, ScobleShow, and Diggnation; but I thought that Scobleshow and TikiBarTV did not have enough bits per second so their quality suffered somewhat.

I also hope that folks keep to the standards and use .mp4 files rather than .m4v … Apple is not the only game in town …

… I think that this is the spec to use:

H.264 video, 1.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Low-Complexity Profile with AAC-LC audio at 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .mp4 file format

Finally, here is a HD Podcast from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....tfront.htm

Its a good news for all the Video IPOD users. Generally Google Video provide ipod compatible videos. Thanks for the news.

http://www.suggestusability.com

thanks for the news - great for those who need to format their digital content

Thanks for this tip. Since I just started to mess around with video, this is definitely a good tip to have.

Rex

Erik,

There’s no difference between standard .mp4 and .m4v. Apple uses the file extension .m4v (MPEG-4 video) to distinguish from .m4a (AAC, or MPEG-4 audio).

Essentially MPEG-4 video is a larger “container” than the audio profile, and supports greater regions for metadata. It’s also useful to remember that the MPEG-4 container and profile is largely based upon Apple’s QuickTime with SMIL, VRML, and X3D thrown in for good measure. VRML and X3D allow support for BIFS. H.264 is MPEG-4 (Part 10).

And National Geographic has plenty of (free) HD video podcasts available from iTunes store. Even the “regular” National Geographic podcasts are very highly quality. The NY Times does a very decent job as well… and there’s always NASA content.

While that’s good advice, isn’t that kind of like saying ‘Hey everyone! Spend more time, bandwidth and money (delivering them) increasing the quality of your podcasts to make our product look better!’

I expect, in some cases, video podcasts which end up with massive filesizes will be downloaded less. Possibly.

Why do they say that having multiple sized versions/feeds will reduce the popularity? This a bit silly. Doesn’t seem to do Diggnation / Revision3 etc etc any harm.

Ahh.. hang on.. of course - it’s ‘their’ chart. Why would that reduce exposure? Seems like a bit of a dodgy chart system, if you ask me.

Kosso,

Apple’s iTunes store typically doesn’t “host” the user contributed podcast content, it’s simply a very fancy index. You’re welcome to link to the podcast to/from anywhere on the ‘Net.

Multiple file formats are confusing to the consumer, ergo reduce popularity. The iTunes store is *very* consumer-oriented, however you are not limited to a single file type (audio and/or video). Most user contributed podcasts are created by amateurs (i.e not TV/Film professionals) so it’s perfectly acceptable for Apple to provide guidelines, tips, and how-tos for this population.

You could designate (and provide) a bazillion different video bitrates on you own web site, but Apple presents guidelines for use within *it’s own store*. That’s a perfectly legitimate request. Even YouTube has guidelines for video uploads. Similarly, Amazon won’t list products without a valid Universal Product Code (UPC) code, nor can you exploit it’s usage policy when listing products for sale, or accessing it’s API.

hello hello!

I hear ya.

I know they don’t host. And sure, higher bitrates and resolution make for prettier pictures on screen, but I like that fact that some podcasters provide (like revision3) a version for ’small’ QuickTime and ‘large’ etc. - though you could argue they’re a much more techie audience

I think there’s also con(sumer)fusion in ‘.mp4′ and ‘.m4v’

I see thousands of rss feeds in my work (CTO of podcast.com) and many are very very broken. This really saddens me that people go through so much effort creating the media content, then fall over on the distribution (the rss feed)

I wasn’t saying that giving guidelines are a bad thing at all - especially for ‘amateurs’ - we’ll certainly be providing alot of that information and advice when we’re fully up and running on our site.

I’m just a little dubious about their ‘charts’ - which I heard is very easy to ‘fiddle’

Also not everyone has highdef - or the hardware to produce it without rendering video overnight etc. — ahhh.. hang on.. buy a MacBook Pro - there’s a solution. Nifty huh?

I’m certainly not against good advice, but I just wonder about the hidden motives.

ps: I love Apple hardware - since Intel came in.
I’m no Apple Basher

hello (again) hello,

Also, I suppose I misinterpreted the quotes around “fix your videos” - thinking Apple actually think the videos are broken.

Also, in the email they say (nicely) : “Of course these are just recommendations. We understand that there are good reasons for 320×240 (bandwidth bills) and 720p (looks fantastic). Do whatever makes the most sense for your show.”

So, not such a bad Apple after all.

hello,

.m4v and .m4a are not standards, rather Apple-specific formats/extensions … I think that their primary purpose is to allow them to track audio versus video usage … I saw the same thing with .rv and .ra versus .rm (all not standards but similar motivation from the vendor).

If we all just use the .mp4 file format/extension and standard codecs then the media will wont be hostage to one vendor’s playback system.

Can you think of any reason to have multiple extensions and formats in this case?

Here is a good resource on standards: http://www.isma.tv/

30fps is a waste of bits. Only 25fps is required for smooth motion.

- hmm I find it nice for apple to release to everyone - how to make their own product look best -

-RB

We’ve been doing a podcast for a little while now over at http://www.solmi.net. Ever since apple bumped up the resolution on what the iPods with video can display we’ve met those guidelines. I haven’t seen what our show looks like with Apple TV, but I imagine (I hope) it wouldn’t be too bad. If somebody could test it out, that’d be awesome.

Erik,

I wasn’t implying that .m4v was a “standard”, of course MPEG-4 is the ISO standard.

I’m not a fan of multiple file extensions either, however, I’ve not had had a problem with playback of Apple file types on any device (or software) that is MPEG-4 compliant.

In fact, when you use Apple’s desktop software (consumer and pro) to create media files for RTSP streaming, the default file extension will be MP4 for both audio and video.

Real (now Helix) has supported MPEG-4 for years now as well.

Both Apple and Real experienced the distinct (dis)advantage, of having an enormous installed/deployed customer base of their earlier proprietary digital media file formats. I will say that both vendors have done a *fantastic* job of continuing to support those legacy formats, while transitioning to MPEG-4.

I readily can playback and/or stream Real (.ra, rm) or QuickTime (.mov) files that were created 15+ years ago. Transcoding to contemporary standards hasn’t been problematic either.

Sadly, I can’t say the same for Windows Media Files.

Sorry for the confusion, I made the prior post at 4am my time :).

How does uploading multiple videos with different resolutions dilute anything? I thought we were trying to catch the wave of traffic that depends on what time one uploads the file. It may increase traffic by 700%. This is my experience on You Tube. How is itunes is different?

Don’t add the 4:3 aspect ratio. Who does that? Most video bloggers can’t afford to shoot in HD 16:9. If we record DV/DVCPRO - NTSC should we export to 16:9?

I would REALLY appreciate the clarification.

1080p true new High Definition standard (1920 x 1080 pixels) is much needed!!!

sarah,

i’m slammed on the day job. i’ll get back to you.

please check back late tonight or early tomorrow.

@Sarah Myers: What Apple meant was that IF you shoot in 16:9, do NOT letterbox it to make it 4:3. If you already shoot in 4:3 (which you do), you don’t need to change the aspect ratio.

You see, on Galacticast we’ve been letterboxing the show for the iPod since we launched! It’s annoying, but in the beginning 16:9 did not work on the iPod. Unfortunately, we suffer from “diluted popularity” in the second point because instead of having one feed in the iTunes store, we have two different feeds (iPod and Apple TV). It’s just difficult to FORCE such HUGE files on your fans when they’re used to smaller iPod files.

My suggestion to other video podcasters? Don’t use the “Movie to Apple TV” option in QuickTime Pro… use “Movie to QuickTime Movie” because by setting your own parameters you can make a smaller file that looks just as awesome. Here’s a link to our settings, it makes a file %50 smaller than the “Movie to Apple TV” default settings and still looks great:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/c.....433249448/