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Converting Anime to Your iPhone / iPod Touch29

by 655 days ago

The tutorial here will not update in the future. Snow has updated this tutorial. Read more on his new blog here. If you have any questions regarding the tutorial, make sure you leave comments on his blog.

Latest update – 23 June 2010

Hey everyone, don’t you sometimes just want to bring your anime on the road and watch it in the bus or train but haven’t figured out how they can convert it properly. Here is a guide to help you convert a .mkv file to a mp4 file which is compatible on the iPhone / iPod touch and might even be compatible on other iDevices and possible the PSP or any other device supporting H.264 video. This will include softsubtitles. I haven’t tested the PSP yet but when I get my hands on one I’ll see if it works.

You can probably convert any video format to an mp4, just follow the guide and instead of the .mkv file use the file you have, like .rmvb. However it could be that you can’t add soft subtitles, if you can’t enable or disable your subtitles while watching it than you have a hardsubbed video, therefore just skip the steps with the softsubs.

Be warned though, I tried to make this guide as beginner friendly (not noob friendly, you have to have some IQ) as it can be however there are a lot of steps involved so don’t freak out and re-read some parts to understand it better. The first few times might go a little slow but once you get used to it, you’ll be converting the anime like lightening.
It can be very frustrating, I’ve been trying to figure out how this work for a day now and I just got it to work.

Working formats: .mkv ; .rmvb ; .avi ; .mp4
Converting Anime to Your iPhone / iPod Touch
Converting Anime to Your iPhone / iPod Touch
Converting Anime to Your iPhone / iPod Touch
Note: Firmware of your device might play a role if you can’t play or even sync this to your device. I’m using the latest firmware 3.1.3 for iPhone/iPod Touch. Read the bottom of this page first starting from (*1) till audio because you might want to know that beforehand.

Things you need:

Optional:

Packs:

  • Demux training pack v2 – Download that file if you want to practice demuxing and encoding on a 10mb file before handling bigger files. It including mkvtoolnix with MKVextractGUI and an OVA of K-ON!. Good luck! (Replaced RAW AAC with .m4a for easier demuxing and converting. )

Steps:

  1. Start off by installing everything and have the NeroAacEnc downloaded, you may skip the optional part.
  2. The first time that you start MeGUI it will ask you to update, go and let it update. ( If you haven’t installed Avisynth it will also ask you to install that )
  3. When you’re done updating, in MeGUI press ctrl+s > external program settings > and at NeroAACEnc press [...] >select NeroAacEnc.
  4. Check under the ‘input tab’ and than ‘Encoder settings’ to see if you have an x264: iPhone/iPod Touch setting. If you do have it proceed to step 6 if not go to step 5.
  5. If you don’t have the iPhone encoder setting press ‘ctrl+U’ and on the left side select ‘Profile collections’, on the right side; right click on Tx264 and ‘Force (Re)install’ do this for “STAudio” too and press update. You will be prompted with a screen full of profiles you can select the preset to import. I recommend you to use “standard iPod/iPhone” as this will not create large file sizes and the quality is fair but it’s up to you, go ahead and experiment with it. As for the audio you have to pick “Nero AAC iPod good or high”
  6. Now we can finally start to encode something, on the main screen press “ctrl+R” and at “Video input ” press the [...] button and select the video file you want to encode. The video will pop up, just close it.
  7. Resize it to your device’s resolution, for an iPod touch/iPhone it’s 480×320. Tick “resize” and tick “Suggest resolution (mod16)”; this keeps the aspect ratio, for 16:9 you’ll get 480×272 (most likely). Press [Save] at the lower right corner.
  8. The “Avisynth script” and “video output” should’ve been filled in, now select the encoder setting, for example iPhone – Standard, at the drowndown menu . Press [Config], change the AVC profiles on the right from Main to Baseline profile.
  9. Tick “Advanced settings at the middle of the main tab. This will show you more tabs, go to the Misc tab and remove the text “–vbv-bufsize 10000 –vbv-maxrate 10000 –profile main –level 3″ in the custom command line.
  10. Press [Ok] and it will prompt you to save the profile or not, it doesn’t really matter but I recommend you to press [Yes] if you want it for later use and don’t want to repeat the steps.
  11. Now it’s time to insert audio, at the main screen, to the right of “Audio input” press the [...] button and select the audio track you wish to import, you can just select the .MKV as source file, it works perfectly fine with K-Lite mega pack installed. see (*1) & (Audio) if you don’t get it to work
  12. At the encoder setting, select Nero AAC iPod good or high.
  13. At the extension select mp4-aac
  14. Press [Config] and check if the AAC profile is set to “AAC-LC” and I recommend the bitrate to be “adaptive bitrate @ 128kbit/s, if you desire so, you can set it higher and press [Ok]
  15. Press [Auto encode] at the lower right corner.
  16. The container should be mp4 and the device should be the device you’re encoding for. Size and bitrate should be { No target size }
  17. If you want to add soft subtitles read on if you don’t want soft subtitles press [queue] and go to step 21 (*2)
  18. Check ” add additional content” and press [Queue]
  19. At subtitle 1 press [...] and select the subtitle file. The annoying thing is that this doesn’t support .ass subtitles (*2) so you have to convert that to .srt subs. Set the language and name. Make sure that the container stays mp4 and not MKV or M2TS.
  20. Select the device type again and press [Go]
  21. Now go to the “Queue” tab and press [start] at the lower left corner
  22. Put the output file onto your device and enjoy your anime on the road =).

(*1) You could select the mkv source file and use that as audio source but it might not work so you have to demux the mkv file first to get the audio. Usually it has .ac3 or .aac audio. If it doesn’t work it means that MeGUI doesn’t support that audio and you have to convert it, see Audio below on how to.

(*2) You have to demux the mkv file to get the subtitle file, the subtitle file could be .ass or some other format but so far only .srt worked. You can use subtitle workshop to convert .ass to .srt ( Subrip in the dropdown menu) , open the subtitle file and save as .srt ;;  .ass subtitles don’t want to be integrated into a mp4 container but if you have a device that reads mkv it should be fine if you use .ass.

Demuxing:To demux your .mkv container just install MKV demux all then drag your mkv onto the program and press demux.You will get multiple files including subs, audio and video. You can then use those files to convert it into a mp4 file. If you use MKVtoolnix instead (which I recommened) just open MKVextractGUI.exe and choose the source, tick the files you want to demux and start demuxing.

Audio: There are certain MKV files that have audio which isn’t supported by MeGUI, this is due the lack of codecs on your machine. Try K-Lite first instead of this since it contains all the codecs you will probably need. What you have to do is to convert that audio file to a file that MeGUI can read e.g. .ac3/.mp3/.m4a ( there are probably more but I haven’t tested everything as of yet)

  1. Download BeHappy
  2. Extract
  3. Copy the plugins from the BeHappy folder to the plugins folder at ..\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins
  4. Copy NeroAacEnc.exe to the encoders folder in BeHappy
  5. Start the program
  6. At [1] choose BassAudio and select your source
  7. Skip [2] and put disable at [3], you don’t really have to tinker with the setting unless you want to.
  8. At [4] select NeroDigital AAC from the dropdown menu (You may configure it if you want)
  9. Choose your destination and save as .m4a not .mp4
  10. Use the .m4a file as audio source in MeGUI, when you press encode do not overwrite.

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Written by

Just someone who enjoys watching anime and likes the Eastern culture, be it Japan, China or Korea. I'm also into technology, who doesn't love new gadgets and stuff ;)? On an other note, I'm just an amateur blogger sharing some reviews, stories and tech news. If there are any questions, leave a comment and I will respond ASAP.

Discussion

  1. Guiltyspark

    Are you able to make a guide for converting from .rmvb, i can’t seem to find any working (free) converters
    :\

    Reply
    • Snow

      Hey Guiltyspark, I’ve just tried to convert an .rmvb to mp4 and the conversion went flawlessly.
      You can just follow the same steps except that .rmvb usually has subtitles which are hardsubbed so you can’t put softsubs in it. ( Technically you can but turning them on won’t let you read it because it will have 2 subs overlaying eachother )

      So to be short:
      Create an AVS script -> select the video
      For the audio just use the .rmvb file
      Than just press autoencode and press start queue tab.

      For configuring the program read the tutorial =)

  2. Mar Lin

    MediaCoder for almost everything… just learn how to configure it.
    FormatFactory for .ogg audio files.. you may want to go to avi first, then use MediaCoder,
    Because FF has screwed up file lengths….

    Reply
    • Snow

      I guess that’s an easier way to encode videos. But really though, MeGUI just has so many functions and probably the only thing that’s limiting you are codecs. I love the program for its versatility however the user-friendliness should be tweaked I suppose. It’s definitely my program of choice to encode video with softsubs for portable devices ;)

  3. Xinchou

    I have one question though. What about subs that also show text at the top of a video (for example, if there is some kind of TL note)? Does this program make it appear up as well or is it going to mess with the other subs?

    Reply
    • Snow

      Good question, too bad that TL notes and other texts that appear in certain locations are going to show up at the bottom. it could get quite crowded there ^^”.
      Unless you have ridiculously long TL notes, there’s not much to worry since it will show up in 2 lines.
      As far as the new shows go, text that aren’t subtitles aren’t that common.
      And since it’s SRT subs, you won’t get the fancy colours and stuff.
      I don’t recommend converting it to hard subs, that’s just… well lets just say I hate that ;) .

      Offtopic: I noticed you’re also Dutch =D, I suppose you could read those screenshots just fine ;) .

    • Xinchou

      Hmm. I see. Well, it’s not like there will be much if those text anyway so I guess it’s not that big of a deal. I’m currently converting a movie anime (so it takes much longer than it’s supposed to be ^^). For some reason, while I demuxed the .mkv file I didn’t get an audio file so I just skipped that step but is that going to be okay? I hope it isn’t going to convert the video without the audio. Well, there’s 24 minutes left so I’ll jst let ya know when it’s done.

      Offtopic: yeah, I noticed you were Dutch just looking at the screenshots. I pretty much lol’d :3. Too bad your Internet connection sucks @ T-Mobile, just like me T___T

    • Snow

      That is odd, all MKV files do have a separate audio track to my knowledge. If not I hope you’ve selected the MKV file itself as the audio source. Anyway, before I encode my video I usually use an OP or ED since they’re just 30 mb or something so that way you can test if the demuxing went well, if the encoding went well, if the quality is as you want it to be etc..
      I’m going to upload a test MKV file of 10 MB, for people that want to try it out before actually using it on a movie of an hour or two long.
      Anyway, I hoped the encoding worked.

      Offtopic: T-mobile does indeed suck, however they are trying to fix the problem, I hope it will be solved before the new iPhone come out =/

  4. Xinchou

    Ok, so I’ve encountered a few problems. First, the conversion for the movie I did today went well, the only thing is that it doesn’t has audio, but that’s because I didn’t get a audio file while demuxing. That’s why I tried some smaller file so I can test if the problem lies within the file I tried to convert (lol, how come you put up exact the same file I already had and was planning to use as well xD).

    So, first, I tried demuxing it and indeed found the audio file. My big movie file didn’t have such a file so I guess I can blame the movie for that. I followed your steps, when at step 20, I pressed the Start button, the audio part showed a error and nothing happens. I retried this 3 more times but the same thing happens. I hope you’re common with this problem and can help me with this. :3

    Screenshot: Step 20 http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq12/fury230/errordemux.png

    Reply
    • Snow

      haha, I guess bright minds think alike?
      For the audio error, I’m not sure but you should should click the log tab and screenshot that.
      Because looking at that picture, it could be everything.
      However, I probably know what it could be.. stupid me if it is though.

      What you have to do is actually get the NeroAAC codec, sorry for that.
      http://www.nero.com/eng/downloads-nerodigital-nero-aac-codec.php
      Download and extract
      in MeGUI press ctrl+s > external program settings > and at NeroAACEnc press [...] > go to the win32 of what you extracted and select the file.
      Voilà, it should work perfectly now.

      Silly me for forgotting that step, thanks for the heads up though, I’ll update the post.

    • Xinchou

      Hmm, it seems like I already had the NeroAAC codec. I still followed your steps though, just to be sure. After adding the NeroAAC codec I tried it again. However, I still get this error. The different thing this time is that it took a little bit longer (like one second) before that error-thingy came up. Why am I always having this kind of problems? T_T

      Anyway, I uploaded a screenshot of the log as you requested. Now, I can’t make anything up from this log. I’m no expert at this, but I think it isn’t able to open/read the audio file or something as it says “Could not open as video or audio”.

      Here’s the screenshot: http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq12/fury230/log050610.png

    • Snow

      Yeah I found out the problem, it’s because MeGUI doesn’t support RAW AAC, which is what Frostii used.
      To fix this the AAC has to be converted to m4a,mp3 or ac3.
      Strange that Frostii used RAW AAC, but it doesn’t really matter.
      Easy fix, http://behappy.codeplex.com/, get that package, extract and put NeroAacEnc.exe into the folder ‘Encoder’.
      Start the program, in the dropdown menu select BassAudio and select the AAC file at source.
      Skip [2] and put disable at [3].
      Choose your destination and in the dropdownmenu select NeroDigitalAac.
      Enqueue and than go the the queue tab and press start.
      You now get a .m4a file, so basically select that as audio source and when it asks you to overwrite when you start encoding, press [no].

  5. Xinchou

    Thanks, it amazes me how you seem to have a solution for every single problem I have. I wish I knew all that stuff :O

    Anyway, this time the problem begins before I even get the chance to test this in MeGUI.
    I did as you said, I put the neroAacEnc.exe file in BeHappy\encoder.
    I started the program and set all things up like you asked me to do. To be sure I’ll post a screenshot to assure you I’m not doing anything wrong.
    http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq12/fury230/BeHappySet.png

    When I Enqueue and press start I get a pretty familair error =__= (I’m like an error-magnet >____<
    http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq12/fury230/BeHappyError.png

    Sorry to bother you so much, it's really annoying to get these unending waves of errors and errors.

    Reply
    • Snow

      I forgot to tell you but the plugins in the BeHappy folder should be copied: “The dll’s listed must be included in your Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins folder.” ( you might see an x64 plugin folder, maybe not, but to be sure paste it in both folders )
      So BeHappy > Plugins all those .dll files should be copied to the Avisynth plugin folder.

      Important: Save it as .m4a not as .mp4
      You can change the extenstion to m4a in the destination.
      Don’t overwrite when you click Encode in MeGUI, remember that =p.
      Best thing is to start the demuxing from scratch.

      And don’t worry, this only makes my guide better XD. Someone has to try it first, it’s really helpful that you’re actually trying to do this and giving feedback.

      Lets see if it works now, shall we ;) .

    • Xinchou

      Finely, thanks so much. It works! :D
      I think I will be using this alot now :)

      One thing though, at (*2) you’re saying to open the .ass file and save as .srt file. You can chose all different kind of formats but it doesn’t say literaly .srt but SubRip. I think you should mention it is named SubRip in Subtitle Workshop so people won’t get confused. If people don’t know that SubRip is .srt, they will keep searching for .srt XD

      GREAT GUIDE! Thanks alot :3

    • Snow

      Awesome, good job on getting it to work.
      I’ll be sure to update the (*2), have fun and enjoy encoding your anime to your iPhone ;)

  7. Cezzane

    I have problem while converting the video. In the end it turns out to be music file. Why? Please help!

    Reply
    • Snow

      What is actually the problem?
      Is the music not being played on your encoded file?
      What kind of file are you encoding?

      Everything should go fine if you have the K-Lite codec pack installed, that fixes a lot of audio problems.

  8. Havoc

    Cheers for the guide, couldn’t get it to work the first few times it kept hitting errors when i started the encode. But after tweaking some options it ran perfectly and got 12 great quality videos on my ipod. They all showed up as films and all i had to do was turn off the fullscreen function when they were playing on my device so i could see the very ends of the subtitles. Thanks again.

    Reply
  9. Sawendro

    I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but every time I try this, I get an error in the audio stream. I’ve checked and made sure I have all the codecs (including the Nero one) and I’ve tried using the base .mkv as well as the demuxed audio track (using the demuxing tools).

    Reply
    • YoU

      Hi Snow, guess Antheon and you made a new blog (somehow you didn’t tell me). Have forward the post to your new site.

    • Snow

      Hey YoU, we’ve been busy changing this and that =p Been actually changing it for quite some time now. Only recently got the new site up and running again.
      Thanks for forwarding, also we’ve added TheAkiba to the blogroll :D

  12. Kazuki

    Ok I got stuck. On the “press ‘ctrl+U’ and on the left side select ‘Profile collections’” part. I did that there is no Profile Collections item to click. Help please.

    Reply

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