Does anyone know the bitrate of iPhone 4's HD video?

I'm deciding whether I should buy the 32GB or 16GB gig model, and info on the bitrate of the HD video it records would be useful.

For instance, on the tech specs page it says it supports playback of up to 35mbits/second, but it doesn't say what it records at.

For instance, if it does record at 35mbits/second, that's 15GB/hour. So that means the 16 gig model will basically be able to record and store no more than an hour of HD video.

But you don't need 35mbits/second for HD to look good. You can actually get away with 4mbit/second, which effectively allows for 8 hours of recorded HD video storage on the 16gig model.

Anyone know what the HD recording specs are? Apple doesn't seem to list them anywhere.

Posted on Jun 20, 2010 7:18 AM

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5 replies

Jun 20, 2010 9:39 AM in response to AgmLauncher

There are several threads on this forum that discuss in length the size of the new HD files. But since no one knows the compression ration we are all guessing. My guess is somewhere between 30MB and 60MB per minute of video. So an hour of video will take between 1.8GB and 3.6GB.

So you have to ask yourself if you need to store more than an hour or two of video that you shoot with a handheld cell phone. I certainly won't need the 32GB. My current iPhone 3G uses 3GB of my 16GB memory.

Jun 20, 2010 11:08 AM in response to nedhamilton

Hmmm, well maybe I can answer my own question. I found this raw video from the 3Gs

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/videos/penny_chase.MOV

Looking at the stats, it's 640x480 @ 4mbit/s and the compression quality looks fantastic. I'm going to assume that Apple will try and aim for the same compression quality for the 1280x720 resolution of the iPhone 4 video recording.

Since 1280x720 has 3x the pixel area as 640x480, it will require roughly 3x the bit rate to look just as good. It's not that simple, but it should be a good approximation.

So I'm guessing the bitrate will be around 12mbit/second in order to maintain that same compression quality @ 30FPS. That will translate to roughly 5GB/hour of video.

Jun 28, 2010 1:17 AM in response to AgmLauncher

Here is the info I got from shooting a 1 min clip on my iPhone 4:

Filesize: 73.6 MB/min = 4.42 GB/hr
Audio: Mono 64 kbps
Video: H.264 1280x720 10643 kbps

Has anyone been able to test if there is a limit per video file other than the device running out of memory?

What is the minimum video bitrate I should convert my video files to for playing on the iPhone 4?

Thanks.

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Does anyone know the bitrate of iPhone 4's HD video?

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