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I have some 60 FPS videos ranging from 640x480 to 1280x720. I was able to convert a few using H.264 Baseline @ L3.0 and sync them to Photo Albums on the iPhone and they clearly are playing back at 60 FPS. The smoothness is incredible.

Apple's tech specifications claim the iPhone can playback up to 30 FPS, but evidently this is not a true limitation.

My problem is most 60 FPS videos I have, fail to sync in iTunes and I get a message saying this video is not playable on the iPhone.

What do I need to do differently to make 60 FPS videos reliably convert to iPhone 4 compatible H.264?

Tools like MediaCoder iPod Edition and Any Video Converter tend to either force 30 FPS (A.V.C.) or crash outright when handling 60 FPS videos (MediaCoder which uses the x264 project to do the converting).

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2 Answers

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I use Handbrake to encode my files to iPhone and iPad specs. Handbrake has presets for all the major Apple devices, so you don't even need to know the specifications for each device. It even differentieates between an iPhone before the iPhone 4 and an iPhone 4. Works every time for me.

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Handbrake does not have any FPS settings above 29.97 FPS. I tried Same as Source and it did preserve 60 FPS, but the resulting videos don't sync to iTunes. Format not compatible with iPhone error. I noticed it's creating H.264 Main@L3.2 ("Large file size" checked), and High@L3.2 ("Large file size" unchecked). Judging from the 60FPS H.264 videos I have that work, I need Baseline@L3.1, but Handbrake doesn't seem to give me that choice. – Syclone0044 Nov 10 '11 at 2:49
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I found out the solution!

It seems the iPhone 4 can play back 60 FPS H.264 videos up to 640px horizontal resolution. Anything beyond that gave me the dreaded format not compatible error when syncing to iTunes.

640x480 or 640x360 work great and boy are they lifelike.

I successfully used QuickTime (Export using MPEG-4 Video settings), and MediaCoder iPod Edition to convert videos to the 640xXXX @ 60 FPS H.264 format profile as high as Main@L3.1.

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