Understanding the way television works. The TV industry is dominated by two main standards for TV design: PAL and NTSC. Just to give you an idea of the kind of picture quality to expect we have drawn up the examples below.

Converting movies to your iPod Video.

NTSC.

Low quality and odd frame rates. NTSC stands for the National Television Systems Committee, it is the colour video standard used in North America, Canada, Mexico and Japan. Some have said it should stand for Never Twice Same Color because no two NTSC pictures look alike. Due to the electric system used in the US it was decided to scan the lines across the NTSC TV screen at about 60Hz (or 60 half frames per second) which produced 30 whole pictures every second. NTSC resolution is about one sixth less than that of PAL. NTSC uses 525 horizontal lines of which only about 487 make up the active picture.

PAL.

PAL 625 horizontal lines but only about 540 of these are used for the picture. PAL is higher quality than NTSC, it keeps a sharper picture and remains closer to the original format produced by motion picture cameras. Due to the European electric standards it was decided to interlace PAL lines every other line at 50Hz producing 25 whole frames every second.

iPod Video Resolutions/Codec’s

The supported movie formats that the iPod Video can play are :-

• H.264 video 768kbs, 320 x 240 resolution, 30 frames per second. 160kbps 48khz stereo sound Baseline profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC.
• MPEG 4 video 2.5Mbps, 480 x 480 resolution, 30 frames per second. 160kbps 48khz stereo sound (in .m4v,.mp4 and .mov formats) Simple profile with AAC-LC.

How to import existing video files.

If you search google or any popular search engine you will no doubt find various third party software that will attempt to move your existing PC or MAC video files to your iPod by converting them into a compatible video format. Converting movie files using Quicktime Pro. One of the easiest ways to do convert your video is to invest around 15 UK pounds (about 30 dollars) into QuickTime Pro. Open up the video file you wish to view and go to FILE > Movie to iPod (320x240). Take the converted file and drag and drop it into the Library icon on iTunes. Mac users can download ffmpegx for free from http://homepage.mac.com/major4 and this will do the same thing but for free. Please note that it takes a fair bit of technical knowledge but the resulting file can be of a much higher quality.

Again, we are delving into the area or DRM and Piracy so if in doubt seek legal advice! In theory, if you own an original DVD you should be able towatch it legally on your iPod. It’s easy to move a DVD onto your iPod Video if you own an Apple Mac(tm) thanks to a free application called Handbrake. Converting DVD’s to AVI, MPEG or other formats such as VIDEO CD’s cam take a very long time and if your computer is not so powerful be prepared for a long wait. To convert a DVD on a Pentium 4 with 2GB of DDR memory it can still run into hours rather than minutes. This is dependant obviously onthe size of the Movie and the parameters you wish to convert it to.

Importing DVD's on the PC.

The simplest way is to buy the Full Nero Suite with DVD Decrypter (http://doom9.org/dvddec.htm) and Nero Recode as part of the package. Open DVD Decrypter and save the DVD as a VOB file onto your desktop. Open Nero Recode and select Recode DVD. Choose import and browse your hard drive to desktop and add the VOB files. Making sure Fit to Target is not checked, select Video and then resize to 320 width. Go to Burn Options choose where you want to save the file (i.e. back on the desktop). Go to Nero Digital Settings and check the Expert Mode box. Change the Encoding Method to 2-Pass and under Advanced make sure that the Simple Profile box is selected. Click Burn and when it’s finished drag the converted file into the iTunes Library icon.

Importing DVD’s on the Apple Mac

Download Handbrake from http://www.handbrake.com/ and install it by dragging and dropping it into the applications folder. Insert your chosen DVD, stop it from playing as it will probably start to play automatically. Launch Handbrake, set the Codec value in Destination to MPEG-4 Video / AAC Audio, set the Average bitrate (kbps) to 750 and then click the Picture Settings button and lower the resolution to 320. Close the window and click RIP. Job done! Try checking the 2-pass encoding option for higher video quality at the expense of longer conversion times.

To stop the iPod and iTunes software from synching your entire Video Library to your iPod, set up a playlist called ‘My Videos’ and add whichever videos you want to transfer to your iPod. Open up itunes and go to Edit > Preferences, click the Video tab and check the Automatically update selected playlists only option to save your iPods free space.