Things iPod

I've always held my second-generation (2G) iPod near and dear to me. My brother had the original (1G) iPod and then when my pennies finally added up I heard that the 2G would be released at the next Macworld Expo. I waited and placed my order on that same release day (28 April 2003). Great joy in the morning.

I've held off purchasing a new one for some time. For one, I felt like a pioneer in the middle of this iPod craze. It'd be interesting when people would look at it and say, "what kind of iPod is that? It has all of those buttons!" In addition, 15GB seemed sufficient to me and the following generations offered nothing more than more space and photo capability. But after the rumors of the video-capable iPod were tossed around and then the release and the reviews, I knew the time to upgrade had come.

2G to 5G
I placed the order last week and got it this week. 60GB, black & beautiful. In anticipation I began looking for a proper case for my bundle of joy, and found one. As luck would have it, the case was delivered in the morning and the iPod was delivered in the afternoon. So I cracked open the box, wrapped up my iPod and took it home.

A few good cases with unique and stylish designs:
XtremeMac iPod Cases | Contour Design iPod Cases

Video
One of the biggest selling points for me was the color video capability of the iPod. Therefore as soon as I got it home, I began my quest to get video on there.

CONVERTING - The 5G iPod plays movies, clips and music videos in H.264 and MPEG-4 video formats. It recognizes AAC audio and the .m4v, .mp4 & .mov file formats. Apple's Quicktime 7 program is free, but it cannot convert movies unless you pay to upgrade to the Pro version ($29.99 ). [Using Quicktime Pro to convert videos to iPod].

For the mac, there are alternate free third-party software programs which you can use to convert your movies to a format optimized for your 5G iPod:

iSquint is a simple application made by developers with a great sense of humor. This app, like most others is optimized for drag-and-dop processing of your movie files to iPod. [download iSquint]

Podner boasts the ability to convert movie files up to 6 times faster than Quicktime Pro. For a regitration fee of $9.99 you can convert movie files (even DivX and WMV files) to iPod compatible movies. [download podner]

Handbrake is another free application which gives you more options to tweak the output. The major difference between this and the other apps is that Handbrake converts from DVD files as its source. Be warned that you would need to rip (read: decode) your own store purchased DVDs with another app before you can use Handbrake. But that application to rip your DVDs shouldn't be too hard to find. [download handbrake]

SHARING VIDEOS - There are a few ways to acquire movie files and music videos in iPod format online. One of the most poular ways to do that is via torrents. Torrents enable you to acquire itty bitty pieces of a file (movie or otherwise) from any number of users with that file.  The pieces are then put together on your machine to create the whole, complete file.  You must first have the appropriate software to download and put the bits together. For macs, you can use the Azureus BitTorrent Client. For Windows, umm..errrr....

Here are a couple of sites where you can download torrents from to be opened by your BitTorrent Client:
Podtropolis | TVTorrents |

Its been less than a week and I am well on my way to pimping the new capabilities I now have in my 5G iPod. On my ready to view, list:

24 Series (Season 5, episodes 1-4)
Four Brothers
Flightplan
Sahara
40 Year Old Virgin
Crash
One Night in Paris (c'mon, just wanted to check it out)
The Transporter 2
Red Eye
Wedding Crashers
Prison Break (Season 1)
Phone Booth

iPod video to TV
Belkin announced a great little dock for connectivity to a TV, complete with S-Video, RCA audio/video out, and a remote. [read more]

Comments

[RasChAn]

Within the next couple of days I'll be posting an updated version of the above for Windows users, with links to popular software/sites for movie-to-iPod file conversion.

Stay tuned and feel free to ask questions.