HOWTO: Convert your videos for the iPod

If you have bought the new iPod, or are considering it, you are probably wondering how to get your existing video collection to play on it. Cool as it is, it only plays videos that are encoded as H.264 or mpeg-4 (mp4). It's easy to transcode your videos to either format using the Swiss-army tool of video conversion, Ffmpeg. You can transcode almost any video format (including wmv/divx/xvid) to H.264/Mpeg4 using this tool. Here's how to do it for free on windows without using QuickTime Pro.

The brave way: Download and compile ffmpeg and use the command line options. If you are good enough to do this, I don't have to explain how to use ffmpeg from the command line.

The easy way: Download and install the Videora iPod converter. This is a GUI-frontend for ffmpeg, that has preset options for the resolutions supported by the iPod. Don't let all the options in this program scare you. Here's how to use it with minimum fuss.

1. Click 'Setup' on the left bar and under the dropdown list for One-Click profile, choose an appropriate resolution. I recommend choosing H264/320x240/768kbps/ Stereo/128kbps MPEG-4/320x240/QB4 Stereo 96kbps. Also choose a folder under 'Output videos to'
2. Click on 'Convert' on the left bar and click on the 'Transcode New Video' button. Choose the video you want to transcode and verify that the dropdown under New Transcoding Job on the right shows the encoding profile you chose in the previous step. Now click on the Start button and wait for your video to be transcoded. Be patient since some formats can be quite slow to transcode.
3. Follow step 2 again to put a new video in the transcoding queue.

If you are a Mac user, you can use the ffmpegx GUI to do the same. Here's a howto for using ffmpegx to create iPod ready videos. (Warning: Link is not worksafe!)

UPDATE: After getting my iPod, I realized that the H.264 setting I mentioned earlier does not play on it. The MPEG-4 setting that I have provided above works beautifully though. If you want to get better quality videos, then do the following to further customize the setting

1. Under Setup click the Profiles tab. From the Existing Quality Profiles dropdown, choose the MPEG-4 setting mentioned above. Start with this profile setting since you may not find the appropriate parameters if you try to customize a different profile.
2. Now under the Video Settings box below, set the QScale to 2. (Lower the quantization scale, better your quality). (As suggested in one of the comments below, change the resolution to 480x360 if you intend to pipe your videos from the iPod to a TV. Type it in since you will not find that particular resolution in the dropdown list) Under Profile Name change QB4 to QB2, (and the resolution to 480x360) to reflect the change you just made. Change Passes to Two (This will make your encoding process longer, but you will get better quality with no increase in your file size. Use single pass encoding if you want to save time)
3. Under the Audio Settings box, ensure that Channels is set to Stereo.
4. Click Apply and go back to the Settings tab. Now choose the profile you just created from the One-Click Profile dropdown menu to set it as your default profile. This should give you a much better video quality.