How to Watch Your DVDs and Youtube Videos on Your IPod

I've come across a how-to video guide site teaches you how to watch videos on your ipod. The problem with the tutorial is that they make you go to itunes and pay for the videos you watch. While I have nothing against commercialism, I just really don't like it when you have to pay for stuff that you can actually get for free. This guide will teach you how to watch your DVD and youtube videos on your iPod.

Watching your own videos/DVD on your ipod

First of all, just a reminder, under the Digital Millennium Act, it is illegal for a person to transfer or rip any copyrighted DVD on your computer or make any sort of copy, it is a Federal offense. It sucks. You've spent for this DVD and yet, you're limited to use it. Luckily, this tutorial is for homemade DVDs. A lot of people have those video cam which records directly to DVD. If you want to show your homemade DVDs to your friends or coworkers through your iPod, this tutorial will help you. First, you need a DVD ripper. Download.com has a lot of freeware DVD rippers. Freeware means the author lets you use the software for free but he retains the copyright so you can't sell it. But if you don't want to sort through all that software, I could recommend Handbrake. According to their site, HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It converts any DVD like source to MP4, Avi or OGM. MP4 is the standard video format for iPods.

First, insert your DVD on your DVD rom and run Handbrake. Select the detected volume under Select DVD, click open and the software will detect all the titles on the DVD. Select the video you want to rip and in the destination section, select MP4 as your file format. Set the codecs to MPEG-4 video/AAC Audio and under the File drop down menu, select the path you want to save your file to.

Under video, set the quality to average bitrate. 400 is acceptable, the higher the bitrate, the higher the video quality but expect the file size to be larger. You can select 2-pass encoding for better video quality but it takes twice as long to encode. If you're in a hurry, just skip the 2-pass encoding.

In the Audio section under Language 1, select the audio track of your preferred language, always choosing MPEG. On the sample rate drop down menu, you can choose any of the sample rate. Under the bitrate drop-down menu, the default is 128 though you can choose a higher bitrate but always keep in mind that the higher the bitrate, the larger the file size.

Click the picture settings dialogue box and under the size, set the width to 320 and Handbrake will automatically adjust the height, close the picture dialogue box and then choose rip. Encoding will start and a progress bar will appear.

After encoding is finished, close Handbrake and then open iTunes. Find the folder where you saved the mp4 file you just converted and drag it to your iTunes library.

Saving youtube files to your iPod

If you don't have any homemade movies, you can try downloading youtube videos so you can watch it on your iPod. Here are the steps:

First, go to youtube.com and choose a video that you want to download then copy the video URL. Now go to http://www.youtubex.com/ then paste the video URL to their Download window and select download video.

Choose the path you want to save the video and rename the youtube file with .flv extension if necessary. Again, you can go to download.com to search for a free .flv to mp4 converter or you can try youtubex's free .flv converter on their site.

After downloading any software, you can use the same settings you've used in Handbrake. Always keep in mind that the output format is always .mp4 so that the video can be played on your iPod, and the screen size should be 320x240 so that it could fit on your iPod screen.