Ok I have had this thing for over a year, and I have been reading every conversion guide I can find on the net, and so far nothing has come close to helping me. Here are my questions anyone with knowledge or experience please reply thanks.
First off, I want to know what is the best program to use to get GOOD QUALITY videos on my i-pod for when I play back videos on a Standard Def TV set. I have tried using Sony Vegas, Quicktime Pro, Total Video Converter, and WinAvi. For some reason when I use Vegas and QT Pro it takes FOREVER to convert the files and they always come out HUGE, if i use Total Video Converter, I get a steady converstion and decent quality but it always stretches the picture, even the ones in widescreen, and I always set aspect ratio to 16:9.
Now I know that the stpid thing is made for viewing movies on the tiny screen, but since it has the option of watching videos on a TV, why can't I get decent quality videos? I mean they always looked worse than a 20 year old VHS copy of the films. Now granted I am not watching these on the newest of TV's, it's either the dads set which is a Sony Trinitron SDTV, or the tv I have in my room, which is an older Panasonic Tube TV. For some reason they look better on the older TV, but always look ugly no matter what.
Is there a way to get DVD quality videos on an Ipod? Or am I just being too hopeful here? Also has anyone ever downloaded videos from the I-Tunes store? What is the quality of those videos like? I am tempted to create an Apple Account and just download the movies I want. For now I have been converting either DVDRips or Blu Ray Rips, or any avi I can get my hands on.
I was hoping someone here, Pro maybe, would have an answer for me. I mean Vegas does good quality .mov videos that *sometimes* work, but it always outputs the files anywhere from 2GB to as much as 8GB for .mov files! I tried rendering .mp4 but Vegas takes forever to do those. Do I just need a newer computer, better codecs, different software? Or am I just trying to do something that isn't possible? If I have to resort to buying the videos from Apple themselves, well that is an option but I really don't want to have to do that, not for movies I already own on another format.