The iPhone 4 just begs for some good video content to be played on its high-resolution display—which, contrary to popular belief, isn't made of retinas. The easiest way to get video is through Apple's iTunes Store, but there are many reasons why you might want to watch videos that you already have lying around instead. If you're lucky, your video is already in a format that the iPhone supports. In that case, just add the file to iTunes and sync. But what if it's not in the right format?
The iPhone 4, the iPad, and the latest versions of the iPod touch all support H.264 main profile level 3.1. What that means is that you can play HD video with a resolution of up to 1280x720 and a framerate of 30 frames per second. That's a significant step up from the baseline profile level 3.0 (720x480x30 or 720x576x25) that the older iPhones and iPod touches support, and even an improvement over the older Apple TV, which could only play 1280x720 video at 24 frames per second or less. The main profile rather than baseline profile means that it's possible to use more effective compression.

So how to go about creating those H.264 files?







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Photoshop’s Merge to HDR (High Dynamic Range) automated feature has been improved for CS3, but it is still not able to merge exposures where subjects have moved between the separate exposures. The technique in this tutorial (taken from the new Photoshop CS3: Essential Skills book) shows you how to resolve this problem. This technique also offers superior midtone contrast than Photoshop’s merge to HDR automated feature