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If you want to squeeze every last second from each full charge of your iPod’s battery, there’s a few tricks you should know. Trick 1: Get 3+ Hours of Video Playback on Your 30GB iPod Apple says that the 30GB iPod is rated for two hours of video playback on one full charge. However, I’ve found that my 30GB iPod plays most videos for nearly three hours straight after a full charge. Want to squeeze out a few more minutes and break the three hour barrier? Compress! If you compress your video for iPod-only playback and are willing to make a couple of compromises, I can promise you an extra 25 minutes of battery life from your 30GB iPod. I’m assuming that you’ll get an extra 40 minutes on the 60GB model. It should come as no surprise that smaller videos (smaller picture sizes, lower bitrates and framerates) will play longer on one charge than a video that tops out at the highest settings allowable. But what exactly are you getting? I’ve done some extensive testing and this is what I’ve got so far. A pretty graphic will follow shortly, but I wanted the Lifehackers to benefit from this info as soon as possible. The first file I tested was two hours of full-screen Looney Tunes, compressed using the MPEG4 format, scaled down to only 192 x 144 and at 15 frames per second. When the cartoons ended, I immediately restarted the same file. It played for three hours and four minutes straight! Wanting to be as thorough as possible, I tested several other videos at varying compression settings and framerates. I was very surprised at my results. 1) I got three hours and four minutes of playback from Bugs Bunny cartoons. The video was a highly compressed MPEG-4, but still quite watchable (192 x 144, 256Kbps, 15 frames per second, MPEG-4). 2) The Shining, another full frame video compressed with the same settings as Bugs Bunny, played for three hours and twelve minutes. I’m somewhat picky and this video was slightly less-watchable than the Bugs Bunny. 3) Here’s the big shocker: Again, I ripped The Shining as an MPEG-4. This time I set the video as an MPEG-4, scaled to 320 x 240 (the same size as the iPod’s screen) at 29.97 frames per second and set the average bitrate to 1000Kbps (although the final output video was closer to 700Kbps). These settings are similar to my recommended HandBrake settings. This video played for two hours and forty eight minutes before the battery died. It looked great and filled the whole screen (The Shining is not a widescreen movie). 4)Next, I encoded a generic widescreen DVD that was sitting on a co-worker’s desk at close to the maximum compatible MPEG-4 settings: 480 x 480 picture size (square, not rectangular so the movie was stretched a bit), 24 frames per second, and an average bitrate set at 2,500Kbps (again, the final output was lower - around 2,100Kbps). This video ran exactly two hours and one minute. 5) More testing to come using H.264 videos (and a pretty chart)! Trick 2: Don’t touch that fast-forward button! Your battery’s life is mostly dependent upon how often the iPod’s mechanical hard drive has to spin-up and read more data. We’re not talking just videos here, this is mostly true for when you’re listening to music - especially when you’re shuffling. The iPod spins the hard drive at regular intervals and loads up the next few songs into its solid-state memory. You can actually feel when this happens if you’re holding your iPod in your hand. When you fast-forward through songs, you empty the memory and the hard drive must spin-up again to read ahead a bunch more songs. This drains precious battery life. Make some Smart Playlists so you can avoid the artists or albums that you constantly find yourself fast forwarding through. Trick 3: If you’re going to watch a long video in several sessions, know where you left off. When you seek through a long video file, looking for where you last left off watching, you’re causing the hard drive to spin-up at each stopping point. Each time you search ahead, you’ve just blown a few minutes of precious battery life. Before you exit a long movie midway, press the center button on your iPod and note the time in the clip so you can return to it later. Videos that are optimized for iPod playback should play for nearly three hours straight. If you really want to squeeze out an extra 20-30 minutes of video playback, you’ll have to scale down your video and compress it to the point where you will notice a difference. In my opinion, it’s just not worth it. As long as you’re not optimizing your videos for TV output (and even if you are), you should probably stick with these recommended settings: H.264 Size: 320 x 240 (most widescreen movies will come in at 320 x 176 or 320 x 144) Bitrate: 600Kbps Audio: 128Kbps, AAC Stereo, 44 kHz Framerate: Same as source (or 29.97 for TV output) MPEG-4 Size: 320 x 240 (unless you’re optimizing for TV output) Bitrate: 1000Kbps Audio: 128Kbps, AAC Stereo, 44 kHz Framerate: Same as source (or 29.97 for TV output) |
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