Wrestling with iTunes video
I spent most of last night wrestling with iTunes, with the ultimate goal of being able to load it up with video for workplace background noise. I have a 160G iPod classic and I've only got like 20G of music so there's plenty of room, and the less I'm using the streaming wifi on my phone at work, the better. Plus I really really really want to be able to play West Wing while I work.
The first task was just setting up iTunes. I haven't actually used my iPod in probably over a year. My phone has all but supplanted it. I don't have much music on it, but when I listen to music hiking or at the gym it's almost always Pandora. I hadn't even bothered setting up iTunes on my new computer, which I got two months ago. So I did that, and then imported all the restored music files from the backup hard drive of my old computer...which erased all my playlists (no great loss) AND somehow generated like 800 duplicate files which I had to go in and delete.
Next step: acquire West Wing on AVI. Thaaaaat's all I'm gonna say about that one.
But iTunes won't accept AVI. So the next step was download Handbrake and convert the files to mp4. I did a test run on something I already had (an episode of "Elementary"). It converted no problem, and added to iTunes no problem.
After some fiddling with the sync settings and getting iTunes to stop downloading like 400 back issues of various podcasts, I got my iPod to sync up. It synced everything...except the episode. It was there in my Movies section. It would play in iTunes. But it would not sync.
I consulted the Tumblr hive mind and was informed that when I used Handbrake to convert, I had to click the "iPod 5G support" box. So I had to delete the file and re-convert it from AVI with that box clicked. Went through the whole process again (incidentally, Handbrake takes like 20 minutes to convert one TV episode, so it's non-trivial to do that). It STILL would not sync up the video file. I was about ready to give up when I was advised that if I select the file in iTunes and go to Advanced, there'd be a "create iPod or iPad version" and iTunes would convert the mp4 so it could be synced! Hallelujah! That took like another twenty minutes to convert. BUT IT WORKED. The video was on the iPod! With sound and everything!
So I set up Handbrake to convert all the season 1 episodes over night. This morning I moved them all to iTunes, and set it converting all of them to iPod forms. Then I get to do that six more times. Holy God. But once it's done I will have the whole show on the iPod and I will be very happy about that.
The first task was just setting up iTunes. I haven't actually used my iPod in probably over a year. My phone has all but supplanted it. I don't have much music on it, but when I listen to music hiking or at the gym it's almost always Pandora. I hadn't even bothered setting up iTunes on my new computer, which I got two months ago. So I did that, and then imported all the restored music files from the backup hard drive of my old computer...which erased all my playlists (no great loss) AND somehow generated like 800 duplicate files which I had to go in and delete.
Next step: acquire West Wing on AVI. Thaaaaat's all I'm gonna say about that one.
But iTunes won't accept AVI. So the next step was download Handbrake and convert the files to mp4. I did a test run on something I already had (an episode of "Elementary"). It converted no problem, and added to iTunes no problem.
After some fiddling with the sync settings and getting iTunes to stop downloading like 400 back issues of various podcasts, I got my iPod to sync up. It synced everything...except the episode. It was there in my Movies section. It would play in iTunes. But it would not sync.
I consulted the Tumblr hive mind and was informed that when I used Handbrake to convert, I had to click the "iPod 5G support" box. So I had to delete the file and re-convert it from AVI with that box clicked. Went through the whole process again (incidentally, Handbrake takes like 20 minutes to convert one TV episode, so it's non-trivial to do that). It STILL would not sync up the video file. I was about ready to give up when I was advised that if I select the file in iTunes and go to Advanced, there'd be a "create iPod or iPad version" and iTunes would convert the mp4 so it could be synced! Hallelujah! That took like another twenty minutes to convert. BUT IT WORKED. The video was on the iPod! With sound and everything!
So I set up Handbrake to convert all the season 1 episodes over night. This morning I moved them all to iTunes, and set it converting all of them to iPod forms. Then I get to do that six more times. Holy God. But once it's done I will have the whole show on the iPod and I will be very happy about that.