Copy to IPod H264 or MPEG4 with Desktop Plus and convertor wrapper

[saramj]

Recently purchased a new iPOD video and converted my first file using the AVC H.264 which TiVo desktop recommends for iPOD. Everything went great and I watched the video after placing it on my iPOD.
The question is however, when I right clicked on the file once I had the video in iTunes it stated that the file was MPEG4?????? So.... when I completed the conversion whether it was from TiVo desktop or the converter wrapper what do I pick to have it convert to? I have heard that MPEG4 has a better video quality and is a smaller file (good to be able to place more stuff on my iPOD)

[dlfl]

Recently purchased a new iPOD video and converted my first file using the AVC H.264 which TiVo desktop recommends for iPOD. Everything went great and I watched the video after placing it on my iPOD.
The question is however, when I right clicked on the file once I had the video in iTunes it stated that the file was MPEG4?????? So.... when I completed the conversion whether it was from TiVo desktop or the converter wrapper what do I pick to have it convert to? I have heard that MPEG4 has a better video quality and is a smaller file (good to be able to place more stuff on my iPOD)
H264 or AVC (advanced video codec) is one type of the category called MPEG4, and frequently have the same file extension: mp4. DivX and Xvid are other MPEG4 codecs. I believe any of them may also appear with a .avi extension but AVI is a "container" format that may contain all the above and other types.

That's not to say all these variations of MPEG4 are equivalent. They have differences and require different codecs on your machine to handle them, although many codecs will handle several mpeg4 versions.

Sorry I can't advise on the best choice for what you are doing. Either take someone's advice that you trust or run some experiments with small test clips to compare file size and playback quality.

[windracer]

You can use either one. H.264 sometimes gets better compression and takes more hardware to decompress during playback. The iPods do fine with this. I have to use the regular MPEG-4 profile when I'm converting for my Treo 650.

[jsmeeker]

H264 or AVC (advanced video codec) is one type of the category called MPEG4, and frequently have the same file extension: mp4. DivX and Xvid are other MPEG4 codecs. I believe any of them may also appear with a .avi extension but AVI is a "container" format that may contain all the above and other types.
.

If it was for an iPod via iTunes, it may have been in a QuickTime file. Live AVI, it too is another container file that can carry video and audio in many different codecs.