so how long should my battery last if im watching vids?

thanks
bye:)

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Help!

The CPU on say a Mac, which encoding Video really takes all you can throw at it, and still want more, MPEG-2 optimization for iDVD for example, started aweful! Later we got real-time, then 2 x realtime. This is an issue of optimizing these complex calculations for a CPU which is not even part of say DVD hardware. ( h.264 will improve – but still a lot of choices on how to keep quality say for editing feature film, vs. speed for less important purposes.)

MPEG-2 is a great illustration in this case. Ripping a DVD is at least 90 minutes from DVD. Yet you can fast foreword at 32 X on a DVD player that sold for $9.99 @ Wallmart! ( WTF??)

iPod is similar. It’s small CPU, (ARM 7 @ 80MHz max – Treo 650 has 317MHz ARM ) It uses hardware to decode – Wolfson chip encodes/decodes MP3 – CPU does zero… Video/ Photo/ Audio – these hard coded chips make use of their spec’s – so it doesn’t “Slow down” using 720 x 304 – it processes it’s 230,400 the same – with no regard for your preferences.
The HD has a RISC controller which prefetches with 95% accuracy – one simple guess is you will likely listen to the rest of this song/movie file next – 99.999% of the time.

Backlight is the killer, on laptops, iPods, nothing comes close to hogging more battery life. ( If the light is off, say using TV – it should do far better -and TV should use hardware which is more efficient & that is a hardware reality- )

You do have a good point on file size though. MPEG-4 Movies should fit on a CD, with 720 x320, 544 x 416, AAC 128K – and be indistinguishable from DVD – but pixels reduced from 720 to 320 wide – will be aweful! YMMV – everyone notices pixel count blur ( even ON the iPod screen ) and tweaks can keep file sizes down like dual pass –

I’m aware of the issues of Video size on a HD. Quickly adds up… So, if 60 hours of video on iPod is too low, you’ll need to adjust some things….
( If it’s a TV show I’ll never watch again, maybe different than favorite film ) The reason MP3 is so popular is “most” don’t notice, but can fit 150 songs on 1 CD – so convenient… ( Interesting to watch it happen to Video now…)

i’m curious, can the new the ipod play videos at any other frame rate other than 30fps?

It will definitely play movies that are less than 30fps. All of mine are at 24fps (including ‘Lost’, bought from Apple), and they look great. As far as I know, there are no problems with using 15fps. Congratulations on the new iPod… and the trip to paris!

“From my observations, the battery life drops for movies because the BACKLIGHT STAYS ON!!! It really has nothing to do with drive activity, or any of the other stuff I read.

To prove this, I played my iPod at the office with the backlight on constantly. I get to the red battery level after 3 hours.”

I am assuming you have the 60GB model, right? The 30GB model is only rated at 2hrs of video playback. I won’t disagree with you about the backlight, but there are more factors involved. Your test was slightly flawed… when the backlight is on during music playback, almost every pixel is at full brightness. This wouldn’y happen during most movies, especially if you are watching a widescreen movie in letterbox format, many of the pixels would be dark. It’s also hard to say what effect your specific music data rate had on your battery life. Is your music ripped at 128kbps or 320kbps… it makes a difference.

While there are many factors that can affect battery life, drive activity is without a doubt one of them. The less often your iPod has to spin up that drive to load more data into the buffer, the longer your battery will last.

I also heard a report yesterday that MPEG-4 video is easier on the battery then H.264. H.264 is a very processor-intensive codec to decode.

dan

To prove this, I played my iPod at the office with the backlight on constantly. I get to the red battery level after 3 hours.