iTunes HD-SD to iPhone4?

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iTunes HD-SD to iPhone4?

I noticed after I purchased one of my episodes again to make it have HD, it changed the symbol to HD-SD. Does iTunes transfer HD videos to iPhone 4 or SD videos to iPhone 4?

Dell Studio Slim / Mac Mini 4GB Model, Mac OS X (10.6.3), iPhone 4 w/MobileMe

Posted on Jun 24, 2010 2:53 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 24, 2010 3:21 AM in response to Joe Z in VA

You can transfer 720p videos to iPhone 4. However there is also a sync option that allows you to specify if you prefer a SD version to be transferred during sync. If the sync process finds an SD version it will transfer that. I am not sure if it will do that for your videos or only the for the ones purchased in iTunes.

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Answer 2

Jun 25, 2010 7:51 AM in response to Joe Z in VA

Hi Joe,

Apologies if you already know this ....

The HD-SD feature is a little known or promoted feature of iTunes that is really cool if you know what it does and how to make the most of it. You can override it as the other post suggests but I'd stick with the best unless space becomes an issue

The HD-SD flag indicates for that Movie / TV Show etc there are 2 versions of the file stored in your iTunes library. The cool thing here is that:

1) There is only a single line in the list of movies (otherwise it would all get a bit messy)
2) iTunes will pick the highest quality version available for the device you are using. So HD for Mac, AppleTV, iPad iPhone4 .... SD for iPod classic, iPod Touch, iPhone 1-3

It's not that well known as the feature is not user-controlable in iTunes when you are adding your own movie or TV show. However, it can be done if you know how and use certain 3rd party software.

I've done this for all my best movies, particularly those I have on Blu-ray that I want to view on both my AppleTV/iPad and also my iPod Classic and iPod Touch. You are left with an absolutely fantastic iTunes Movie library which gives you the optimum viewing experience whatever the device you use.

I've written an a series of articles about optimising your iTunes Movie library on my blog and attach a link to the one that covers HD-SD below if you're interested.

http://www.theapplechap.com/TheAppleChap/Blog/Entries/2010/4/30Perfect_video_in_iTunes_-_Part_2Adding_the_completemeta-data.html

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Answer 3

May 10, 2012 1:16 PM in response to leccegills

leccegills: your series of blog posts (the middle one of which you linked to above) is superb, thank you. As somebody who has just bought an Apple TV, I’d been wrestling with the thorny problem of how to import movies into Tunes so that I could send them to both the ATV and my 3GS iPhone. I'd hoped to avoid creating two files (one for each device), but it seems that this is not feasible unless I settle for a compromise where the iPhone gets an unnecessarily large file and the ATV gets a sub-standard image. However, your suggestion of using iFlicks to import both the iPhone-optimised and ATV-optimised files into iTunes so that they show up as a single entry with the HD-SD tag (with the correct file getting synced to the correct device automagically) – not to mention all the meta data and cover artwork – was briliant. Thank you.

My current production line system is: 1. RipIt (to quickly generate videots folders during the day whilst I'm around to swap discs in and out of the Superdrive; 2. Handbrake to crunch through the queued-up videots folders overnight; 3. iFlicks to add metadata and perform the iTunes import (combining the HD/SD files in the iTunes library entry in the process).

I mean, it's slow... I'm doing this on a 4 year old Macbook Pro, so encoding is painful. But still. Yay.

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