Ipod Video - A General Overview
January 7th, 2009

Become An Ipod Expert

The iPod is revolutionizing the personal entertainment experience. When the iPod was first introduced, it only played music. Then, it added a color display and the ability to store and view photos. Next, came podcasts similar to newscasts, but designed for the iPod listening experience. In its latest editions, iPod gives users the ability to download and watch their favorite music videos. With video viewing capabilities, iPod has increased the width of the LCD screen to 2.5 inches to enhance the viewing experience.



The new iPod video isn't limited to playing music videos. You can watch slideshows of your photo memories complete with music, video podcasts, television shows, and movies. There are over 25,000 podcasts, 2,000 music videos, as ABC and Disney television shows available for download from the iTunes Music Store. You can download them to your Mac or PC and sync them to your iPod. An audio cable can be used to play the music from your stereo or an S-video cable to play on your TV.

Just like you can create music playlists on previous generation of iPod, you create video playlists to group videos by genre or any other category you wish. With the ability to store over 150 hours of videos you can create a playlist of all your favorite videos to watch on a plane, on lunch break, in the park, or variety of other places. If you stop in the middle of a video, the iPod bookmarks where you left off and starts there when you replay the video.

iPod video supports two video formats. The first format, H.264 video, supports up to 768 kilobytes per second and a picture size of 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high (the exact size of the iPod screen). The iPod can play H.264 files at 30 frames per second. Applications must be encoded with the Baseline Profile. Audio should be encoded as AAC up to 120 kilobytes per second, 48 kilohertz, in stereo or mono. Files can be QuickTime movie or MPEG-4 movie file with the extensions .m4v, .mp4 and .mov.

The second format is MPEG-4 video. This type supports up to up to 2,500 kilobytes per second, and a picture size of 480 pixels wide by 480 pixels high. This resolution is three times as many pixels as the iPod is able to display. This means the iPod will have to shrink the file in order to display it on the screen. MPEG-4 files are typically larger resulting in less storage space for additional songs and movies. Audio encoding and file extensions are the same as H.264 video specifications.

While the H.264 offers higher quality video and smaller file size, it takes a longer time to covert the file to a compatible iPod video. Because of the higher pixel size, MPEG-4 formats are ideal if you plan to watch videos on your TV.

There are several ways to determine if a video can be played on your iPod. Open iTunes with your iPod connected and drop the file into your iPod library. If the file is copied, then it is compatible. To do this, you will have to make sure that you have selected to manually manage songs and playlists in the iPod tab of your iTunes preferences. Another way to test compatibility is to add the video to the iTunes library. Once it has been added, right click the video and select "Convert selection to iPod". If it is already compatible, iTunes will give you a message saying so. If it is not compatible, it will be converted into a compatible format.

You can add videos to your iPod from any computer that has iTunes installed. If your iPod was originally formatted for PC you can add videos from Mac or PC. If your iPod was formatted for Mac you can only add videos from another Mac computer. If you have QuickTime Pro you can easily convert movies and videos into a format that is compatible with your iPod.

The iPod video includes a few other amenities in addition to its video capabilities: a screen lock to keep sensitive information private, a world clock displaying the time in major world cities, and a stopwatch

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