Results tagged “video” from Missing Manuals Blog

There are a ton of great apps out there designed to snag, convert and shovel big heaps of video onto your iPod and iPhone, and I talked about a few of them at this year's Macworld Expo 2008 in San Francisco. Among my absolute favorites:

QuickTime Pro. Apple's own multimedia powerhouse lets you convert a ton of different formats into iPod-ready video with just a simple menu command. It's only $30 and well worth the price.

TubeSock. This nifty little app converts your favorite YouTube videos from the Web and save 'em right into iTunes, where they're only a sync away from going with you on your iPod or iPhone. There's a free demo version that converts the first 30 seconds of video, and the full version is only $15 -- much less than a single movie ticket and a small stale popcorn in most cities.

Handbrake. If you've got a DVD movie from your collection that you'd like to take along on your iPod or iPhone, this little open-source wonder will convert it into a Pod-friendly file quite nicely.

And even though I talked about these in the O'Reilly booth at *MAC*world, all of these programs have Windows versions as well.

The Queen has arrived! The video library of movies and TV shows is growing nicely over in the iTunes Store -- all in good time for summer and the start of vacation and maximum slacking season. I've purchased quite a few things from the Store, including most of this season's Veronica Mars. Even though the prices are reasonable, I've also been spending a lot of time on a site where the movies and music are even cheaper.

They're free, in fact.

The Internet Archive has been around for more than a decade, but since I got my video iPod, I find I've been visiting it way more often than I used to. The site -- a non-profit organization based in San Francisco -- collects all sorts of digitized audio, video and text for scholars, historians or anybody who wants to look. And being digital, you can even download some of the works.

For iPod enthusiasts, the fact that you can get lots of music in MP3 format or video in the MPEG-4 means you can take it with you (if the file has been bestowed with a "Download" link, that is). Granted, much of the content is older and in the public domain, but if you have any interest in film, music, or cultural history, it's easy to blow most of the afternoon roaming the virtual halls of the Internet archive. The usage rights vary and not everything is downloadable, but the site explains what you can do with each work you find.