April 12, 2007 at 18:04Apple Tips Video Podcasts
Apple advises video podcasts on optimizing their videos for iTunes so that the same video file looks good on both iPod and Apple TV, which is most likely connected to a large HDTV.
An email sent to every podcast publisher on iTunes was asked to go to this page with the technical requirements for podcasts. The message also offered some advice on the technical part:
Encode video in 640 × 480 or 640 × 360 resolution. Such video looks better on HDTV-TVs than 320 × 240, and is also ported to iPod. Although 720p video looks better, it is not supported by iPod. Do not use two formats with different resolutions - this reduces the popularity of podcasts and lowers the position on the charts. If the source file has an aspect ratio of 16: 9, do not add black bars at the top and bottom, to make a video with an aspect ratio of 4: 3 - leave only 16: 9.
An email sent to every podcast publisher on iTunes was asked to go to this page with the technical requirements for podcasts. The message also offered some advice on the technical part:
Encode video in 640 × 480 or 640 × 360 resolution. Such video looks better on HDTV-TVs than 320 × 240, and is also ported to iPod. Although 720p video looks better, it is not supported by iPod. Do not use two formats with different resolutions - this reduces the popularity of podcasts and lowers the position on the charts. If the source file has an aspect ratio of 16: 9, do not add black bars at the top and bottom, to make a video with an aspect ratio of 4: 3 - leave only 16: 9.