Why to convert video files to iPod?
The iPod is a small device that allows you to watch videos and listen to music anywhere you go. It has been invented ten years ago by Apple, and by now there are several different models: The iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Classic and iPod Touch.
What all of these devices have in common is that they are designed to always be with you, as opposed to, say, your TV. When you’re on the bus or having a break at work, then you can easily take out your iPod and watch your favorite shows – imagine having to carry around a TV set instead! However, the TV also has an advantage: you can just put a DVD into the player, and immediately you can watch your movie on the screen. But with an iPod, how do you get the movie into the device?
This is exactly the problem of video conversion. You have a video in one format (e.g. VOB format on the DVD), but you want to play it on an iPod that accepts only other formats. As an example, the Apple iPod supports MP4, M4V and MOV videos.
There exist numerous video conversion tools that simply take some movie in one format, and convert it into a different format. This way, you can watch anything you want on your iPod. However, with a great selection also problems arise: Namely, which of the countless converters are actually good?
Solution 1: Free online way to convert video for iPod
First of all, we look at ways to free convert video to iPod. You already have to pay for an iPod, so why would you then also have to pay for converting videos for it?
The easiest method to convert video to iPod format is to use the Apowersoft Free online video converter. The entire video converter is online and available for free, which means that:
- You don’t have to pay anything to convert your videos to iPod MP4, M4V and MOV formats.
- You don’t have to download any kind of special software. It all works directly online, and within three simple steps.
The steps are first opening your video or movie file, then choosing your output format (for iPod, iPod Touch and other Apple devices, MP4 works very good!), and finally starting the conversion. You can also choose various other popular video formats, if you want to use the video somewhere else instead, and you can make several choices about the quality of the video, if you want to. All the settings however can also just be left alone, in which case the Apowersoft Free online converter will simply use the given settings from your input file.
Solution 2: Convert videos for iPod by using iTunes
Another way to convert video files to iPod is the program iTunes. It is used to sync Apple devices with your computer and with each other, and can also free convert video to iPod format.
To do so, you can open the video file in iTunes directly and first see if you can play it there. If you can play it within iTunes, then you have to navigate to the “Advanced” menu at the top of iTunes. Within that menu, you then have to click on “Create iPod or iPhone Version”. This however may not always work, because iTunes itself is a very bulky piece of software: Especially if you have big playlists that need to be synced, or big files (such as movies) that you want to convert to iPod format, you might encounter troubles with iTunes just stopping to work half-way through the process. It may also happen that iTunes cannot play the video itself – in that case, you also cannot free convert video to iPod using iTunes, but you have to use the Apowersoft Free online converter instead. Finally, we should also admit that the video conversion via iTunes is deliberately made difficult to use, because Apple wants you to buy movies directly from them (and in the correct iPod format already) instead of just using your own movies and videos, no matter where they came from.
After all we can say that Apowersoft’s easy system of three simple steps really is tough to beat, and our recommendation concerning free video to iPod converter is the Apowersoft Free online video converter. It works faster, is easier to understand and can convert videos for free to a lot more formats than iTunes can.
Solution 3: The shareware to convert video files to iPod
Now that we have looked at the free video to iPod converter, we should also mention that there exist other programs to convert video to Apple iPod, such as the shareware Apowersoft video converter studio. The programs that we mentioned before allowed you to convert video for iPod Touch for free, but this program will give you a lot more freedom.
With it, you can convert videos to any video or audio formats that you want. In addition to that, you can also apply lots of effects, such as trimming and cropping the video, or adding subtitles to it. You can even use the more advanced features, such as batch conversions. This means that the same changes can be applied to several videos at the same time – this way you don’t have to specify the exact same effects for every video again and again manually, but you can simply let the Apowersoft video converter studio do the conversion automatically for all the videos. It can also merge several videos into one video, which will be very helpful if you have a movie that comes in several pieces (e.g. after cutting out the advertisements).
So, what have we found out today?
There are several video formats that are not compatible with iPod Nano, iPod Classic and iPod Touch. To get such a video to play on your iPod, you need to convert video to iPod MP4. There are free video to iPod converters, and the one that’s easiest to use is the Apowersoft Free online video converter. Also, you can use the Apowersoft video converter studio instead if you need even more functionality.
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