These are the original PNGs screenshot from the iPad, but obviously they’ve been compressed in our publishing tool. (You can click them to zoom in on the uncompressed original PNG.) I didn’t add a caption so as not to send them through another JPG or PNG compression.
The top image is 480p widescreen. The second is 720p widescreen.
Bear in mind also that a “720p” trailer for a 2.35:1 movie from iTunes actually is only 1280 x 544 pixels – they don’t bother encoding the black bars that would be there on a 16:9 screen. Same with “480p” – it’s actually 848 x 352 pixels.
To my eye, unless you are zoomed all the way to fullscreen, there’s little appreciable difference between the two. Zoomed in to 4:3 you can definitely see more detail in edges and the like, but in motion it isn’t nearly as obvious.
Again, 480p zoomed is on the top, 720p zoomed is below.
If you’ve got the space and a real keen eye – and love zoomed in 4:3 – then you could go with 720p, but for most needs and for most people, 480p is fine. It’s going to be squished into that 436 pixel space no matter what. For 16:9 – more common in HD television – you might be able to more easily tell the difference.
Here’s the thing: I think you should just use 720p for everything. It’s a nice resolution that’s going to look good – or good enough – on everything from your iPad to your HDTV. But you don’t always have the luxury of a high-def source. Plus some people need to squeeze out every last megabyte of space they have. If you’re one of those folks, hopefully this buys you a couple more hours of video.
Want to know how to encode your own videos for iPad? It’s easy.
matt
Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 9:02 AMlol, the ipad, touted as the great media consumption device, can’t even play divx(xvid)? fail! no transcode process is still better than an easy transcode process! though I suppose given the contrived way of how you get everything to and from the device via itunes, adding transcoding to that horrible processes wouldn’t be that big a deal.
glennc
Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 12:02 PMyou are missing the point of the ipad… people don’t care what it does, they just want it for their image.
what apple does do is force other companies to keep up, so we all benefit.
Pinball
Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 1:28 PMIf I had an iPad, which I don’t, it’d be encoding everything using the Apple universal setting in Handbrake. Then you can play the encoded movie on everything from an iPod nano through to a TV connected to Apple TV, or a computer connected to a TV.
Greg
Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 2:42 PMWhat, you mean like what everyone has been doing for YEARS already with divx/xvid?
This is no better than the pathetic Apple TV.
It’s Jobs’ way or the highway – yeehaw!
Steve M.
Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 6:47 PMNo, Pinball was referring to what they’ve been doing for YEARS with Handbrake.
matt
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 11:16 AMlol, key term there: “APPLE universal” yeah, it will play on absolutely everything… as long as it’s Apple…
If you wanna believe that Apple will be the one to produce every product you will ever need, and the best one at that, you go right ahead… A case of Apple once again making life difficult for everyone who isn’t completely loyal and devoted to them.