Faster iPod Conversion?

I wanted to put all the Star Wars films on my iPod, but it's going to take two whole days to convert just one film.  I started out with Adywan's ESB theatrical restoration since I figured Handbrake could read the movie faster off of a mounted disc image file than a physical DVD.  This likely all boils down to the fact that I'm on a seven or eight year old Mac G4 with all of a 128MB video card (the maximum Apple says it is compatible with).  Converting to H.264 or MP4 has always been a pain in the ass, but with iPod, there's no other compatible format.

The only downloads I could find of the already iPod converted films were all PAL encoded (25 FPS) with low resolution / low bitrate.  I'm trying to convert at 1700 kbp/s variable bit rate in full resolution with the black bars cropped off, and the chapter markers intact (all of which Handbrake does).  Basically, the same settings as most any official iTunes Store movie download.  They tend to end up between 1.2 to 1.8 GBs.

So, my inquiry happens to be, is there any faster way to do this, or am I just totally screwed because of my painfully obsolete computer?

-NJM

HandBrake is the best option for everything you want to do for these reasons:

1. You want to choose your bitrate, and use a variable bitrate
2. You want to crop it (and I assume you want to be able to preview exactly what you're cropping)
3. You want to preserve chapters
4. You're using a Mac, and an older one at that

Get the most recent version of HandBrake you can that will work on your system and use that.  Nothing else is going to be much faster, and anything that is will be missing out on some key features for you (namely chapter preservation and Mac compatibility).

If it's any consolation, I use HandBrake on a 3-year-old 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with OS X 10.5.8 and 4GB RAM, and it takes a damn sight longer than I'd like (about 75-80% the length of the movie, sometimes almost the exact same length).

Keeping my computer running for 48+ hours to convert one film to iPod format is the real kicker.  If I want to do all six films, that's practically two weeks straight.  I'm still uncertain if I made the right call for Christmas a few years ago - new computer or new camcorder.  I chose the latter.  For the record, my Mac G4 has these specs:

Mac OS X 10.4.11
1.25 GHz PowerPC Processor
2 GB DDR SDRAM
2 Internal HDs - 60 GB & 80 GB
300 GB / 320 GB / 500 GB Seagate External HDs
128 MB NiVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 Video Card
LaCie All Format DVD/CD LightScribe Burner

And you know what?  My original G4 had a Dual Processor.  It appears my current one does not.  How's that for loser's luck?

-NJM

48 hours for one film?  Yikes, that's rough.  Yeah, I don't think you'll be getting any better results with that setup no matter what program you use.  HandBrake is pretty damn fast.

You could give MPEG Streamclip a try, but you'll need the MPEG-2 Quicktime component first.  And I'm willing to bet it'll be slower than HandBrake anyway.

Already got MPEG Streamclip.  From my math, it seems to go faster (maybe a 10 hour convert).  Though, that is without chapter markers, and it keeps botching up the aspect ratio.  I set everything correctly (including the crop settings), but it keeps defaulting to the iPod preset dimensions instead of my custom resolution.  The only way I find to get around that is usually to convert to a regular QuickTime MOV, and then, into iPod format.

I'm a slight bit surprised the films have never been released on iTunes.  Maybe they're waiting for the full-on HD BluRay release.

I saw the 48 hour ETA when I came home after work the other night.  It had been converting for five hours prior.  Though, I had the wrong aspect ratio settings, and it was set to "fast de-interlace."  I have an eight hour shift today.  So, I'll likely give it another try.

-NJM

After 15 hours, Adywan's EMPIRE restoration got converted.....with a botched up aspect ratio.  It all looked fine on the screen, and the pixel dimension settings were right with the PAR Anamorphic option.  So, I'm gonna have to re-do it, but after another 15 hours, I got ANH converted properly.  So, I know how long it takes, and exactly which settings to use.

I decided to not bother with the deinterlacing, and that's probably a major part of why it was taking as long as it was before.  So, it's just 1700 kbp/s VRB with subtitles (for Greedo & Jabba), and 720x304 (w/o black bars).

-NJM

I use Videora iPod Converter.  If you convert things in "Power Mode" it gives you tons of options.  I used it to convert the saga (the 1080p TV rips with the slightly higher pitch) and they look crystal clear.  Each took a good while to convert - I don't recall just how long, but far less than 48 hours.  Just get the previous version of the software, the current one has some audio issues.