Twelve Black Code Monkeys

It seems like everyone and his brother received an iPod for Christmas this holiday season. For the last month, my blog has gotten almost double the number of hits it usually gets, and I’m almost positive this is because of the two articles I wrote (here and here) about the Video iPod. Those articles are long and somewhat technical at times, so for new Video iPod owners they might be a little overwhelming.

Because Apple wasn’t sure how well their new video features would go over, they didn’t put a whole lot of effort into making it easy for people to learn how to put videos on their new toys. They also started with so few titles in their own store, that most people would naturally be quickly seeking ways of getting additional content from elsewhere. Really, all Apple was telling people was to buy an additional piece of software called QuickTime Pro. This has changed recently, but it can still be confusing for new iPod owners who expect to be able to just go home and click on the “put DVD movie on iPod” button. Of course there is no such button and you still can’t do this sort of thing with the ease that you can add a music CD’s to your iPod.

This all gave me the idea to compose yet another article about the Video iPod, but this one would be geared more towards people who were new to the iPod, to the world of digital video, or to both. You may even have some technical expertise, but this article should hopefully at least give you a real run down on what kind of options you have for getting video on your iPod.

I urge you to also read some additionl material that will really reduce your frustrations with your new iPod. Because Apple has a reputation for making things as easy as possible, they often don’t put information about how to do things they deem too “advanced” into the paltry manual that’s included with their product. While this is good for our trees, and perhaps a fair decision considering a lot of people won’t read manuals anyway, it often means that when people do want to do things that aren’t quite basic, they get lost. Well, luckily, there are plenty of places where you can get information online, so I thought I’d mention just a few.

Ilounge.com: this is a great place for information about iPods, an incredibly extensive collection of iPod accessory reviews, and a very active forum of users, some of whom are very knowledgeable (much more than me!) and are very willing to help those new to the iPod.

Apple iPod Yahoo! Group: If you’re more comfortable with an email list than a bulletin board, than the Apple iPod Yahoo! Group has some great information and users willing to help (including myself). One of the resident experts is a guy named Kirk McElhearn, who’s written a number of computer books, including a bunch on the Mac and the iPod.

Apple: Apple has a great support site for the iPod with answers to frequently asked questions, forums, and a special area called iPod 101 which has some great tutorials for beginners which go into a lot more detail then their manual.

But lets get back to Video, shall we? Where to begin? Probably the thing that comes to mind before even thinking about the iPod itself should be “what kind of video am I going to put on my iPod and where will I get it?” It’s a very basic first question that probably most of us don’t think about because we already have a specific source of video in mind. Even so, many people may also be unaware of some other kinds of video that may prove as valuable as the one they did have in mind! There are at least four major places to look for video that I can think of:

Where to Get Video

1. DVD’s: the source probably most people think of first is that of their own DVD library. You can’t simply tell iTunes to take your DVD and put it on your iPod. You need additional pieces (or piece) of software.
2. Home Video: probably the second most obvious source is video that you’ve shot yourself via a camcorder. You will probably need to convert this into a format that’s compatible with the iPod.
3. Online: Not quite as obvious is video you might find on the Internet. Ok, one of these is very obvious (iTunes), but the rest may not be:
   1. iTunes: the iTunes Music Store (which you can get to only through the iTunes program that came with your iPod) has a growing collection of TV shows ranging from really old ones to currently running ones, all selling at $2 a pop. It even has some free videos - short clips from Saturday Night Live, previews, short featurettes akin to what you might see on a DVD, etc. So far, there are no feature-length movies, but I have no doubt that these will come at some point. None of the iTunes video content require any real additional work other than making the purchase transaction and waiting as your file gets downloaded to your computer.
   2. File Sharing: there are certainly ways you can download copyrighted material illegally off the Internet. The entertainment industry, as it’s done before, is bungling yet another paradigm shift to online media. The can’t think creatively about how to work with this new world, but instead want to impose their old rules which just don’t work here. Eventually they will catch up, but in the mean time, they are forcing many people to illegally download material because they aren’t providing a legal (or affordable) way to get it legally. While we can all disagree on what should and shouldn’t be legal, I’m not going to suggest that you do anything that is obviously not legal, like downloading a movie that you’ve never paid for legally, and which you could easily do by buying the DVD or even renting it.
   3. Free Stuff: Why limit yourself (and put yourself in legal jeopardy) by downloading illegal material when there’s plenty of perfectly legal stuff out there? This massive amount of free video can be found primarily as:
      1. Video Podcasts: if you haven’t heard of “podcasts” you may have been living under a rock for the last year. Podcasts started out as just audio, but now come in video as well. They are basically just audio or video files that are hosted online for people to download. However, they usually are not just isolated single files, but an ongoing “show” that comes out at some regular interval and which you can, with the help of software like iTunes, subscribe to so that they are automatically downloaded and then transferred to your iPod whenever you plug it in. This makes the process of getting new episodes to watch something that doesn’t require any additional work after the initial setup. As I said, iTunes lets you subscribe to podcasts (just choose the “Podcasts” genre within the iTunes Music Store), and there are a bunch of other podcast applications out there as well. While not all of these video podcasts will play on an iPod without conversion, I think more and more are being offered in iPod-compatible formats.
      2. Public Domain: this content includes old movies and TV shows which have gone into the public domain mainly due to their copyright having run out, although some may have simply been offered to the public domain to start with or as a gift to the public way before the copyright would have expired. You can download these from the site Archive.org. There may be other online sources, but Archive.org is definitely the biggest.
      3. And More: there are still other sources of free content which aren’t podcasts and also aren’t on Archive.org. These include Google Video (here’s Google’s instructions on downloading video for your iPod) , and various other sources. There are at least a couple of websites that provide an ongoing list of new sources of video specifically made for the iPod which are very helpful: freeipodvideos.org and podguide.tv.
4. TiVo: yes, you can take the programs that you’ve recorded on your TiVo and transfer them to your iPod. Currently this isn’t supported by TiVo, although they have stated that they are planning to offer this functionality soon. In the mean time, there’s a third-party application that claims to do this from TVHarmony.com. I tried it, but it seemed to go so slowly that it would have taken many, many hours to convert just a 30-minute video, so something must have been wrong. Whether you use this or an upcoming TiVo product, you still have to get your video from your TiVo box to your computer, and that can sometimes be a slow process depending on what kind of setup you have. If you have a different DVR than a TiVo, in particular one made by a Cable or Satellite provider, chances are you won’t be able to convert video programs on it to your iPod. This may change, but for now you can’t do it as far as I know. Some of these companies have stated that they will be creating the ability to put the video on a portable device, but that device is not the iPod.

Adding Video to your iPod

Ok, so you’ve gotten your video that hopefully is in iPod-compatible format (if not we’ll deal with that later), but now it’s still just on your computer, you need to actually get it onto your iPod. While this is an easy task for anyone who’s owned an iPod before, for new iPod owners it may not be. If you buy videos (or download some of the free ones) off of the iTunes Music Store, then you don’t really need to worry - they are automatically added to your iTunes library and transferred to your iPod the next time you connect it to your computer. The same should hold true if you subscribe to a video podcast via iTunes.

If you’ve gotten a video from somewhere else, though, you will need to add it to your iTunes library. First, open iTunes if its not already open. Then in the File menu, choose “Add File to Library.” This will open up a dialog box that will let you browse through your computer’s file system so that you can locate that video file. Once you find it, select it and hit the Open button, and the file should then appear in your iTunes library.

There are a couple ways to look at your videos. One is via the “Videos” area in the “source” menu on the upper right:

If you don’t see such a menu item, than you may have it turned off in iTunes. To make it visible, Choose Preferences from the Edit menu, click on the “General” tab, which is the first, leftmost tab on the window that comes up, and make sure there’s a checkmark next to “Videos”:

Clicking on the “Videos” in the Source menu brings up a special page with a black background and thumbnail images representing the first second in each of the video clips, their title, and their duration (see screen capture above). Unfortunately, when iTunes displays this page, it needs to look inside each video clip to grab that thumbnail, and so it can take some time, especially if your computer isn’t the fastest and/or you have more than a handful of videos. Personally, I like to use the regular iTunes Library listing. You can see a lot more information, like when the video was added to your library, a rating if you’ve made one for it, comments, etc. However, if you have a ton of music on your iPod, you may not see the video file that you’ve just added right away in your library, let alone others that you’ve added before. A good way to filter your library to only show videos is by activating the search bar in iTunes. You do this by selecting “Show Search Bar” in the edit menu. If you only see the option “Hide Search Bar” that means the search bar is already visible. Here’s what it looks like:

Just click on the “Videos” and you will only see the videos in your library – this is a good way to keep track of these files if you have hundreds or thousands of music or audio book files on your iPod and don’t want to keep scrolling through these to find your videos.

Once these files are listed in your iTunes library, they will be transferred the next time you plug in your iPod. However, if the video isn’t compatible, you will get a warning from iTunes when it’s transferring to the iPod, which brings us to our next subject:

Video Compatibility

The iPod can’t simply play any old video file. Just as you can’t play a tape in a CD player, there are different file “formats” for video, and not all are compatible with the iPod. The iPod will only play a couple of different types of video file formats. They are both types of the file format known as MPEG4. One is called H.264 (also known as “AVC” or “Part 10″), and the other is sometimes just called “MPEG4,” but to be more exact should be called “MPEG4 Simple Profile” or just “MPEG4 SP.” If you look at the actual file, you might see a file extension (a few letters/numbers after the main file name) of “.AVI” or “WMV” or “.MP4″ or “.M4V” or “.MOV.” Only the last three are possibly (but not always) compatible with the iPod. Even if the file is in H.264 or MPEG4 SP, it won’t necessarily play on the iPod. There are some other settings within the video file that may not allow for this.

So how do you deal with this issue of compatibility? First of all, you can avoid it completely by using video content that has been made specifically for the iPod, downloaded from the iPod Music Store, and other places online. If you can’t find video that is already in iPod Format, however, you can actually convert it, which can be easy or hard depending on the tool you use, and perhaps a bit of luck. In order to convert video into an iPod-compatible format from a non-compatible one, you need to use at least one of a number of different programs:

Converting Video

Video clips are a bit more straightforward than convernting DVD’s, so lets go over these first. There are a few free options as well as many that will cost you, but usually not a very large sum.

Free Options
iTunes	This is a very new option as of this writing. Just last week, Apple came out with a new version of the free iTunes program (version 6.0.2), that I believe uses the same conversion engine that’s in their $30 QuickTime Pro application.Pros: it’s free, it’s integrated into iTunes so you don’t have to run a separate program, and it’s very simple – you just add the video file to your iTunes library, then choose “Convert Selection For iPod” in the Advanced menu.Cons: it takes a very long time compared to other methods and it’s not as flexible. For a 14-minute video I tried, it took about an hour and a half. If you extrapolate this out, converting one 2-hour movie would take around 12 hours! It also doesn’t let you control how your video is converted. *
Videora	Videora iPod Converter is the other free application that until last week was the only option for Windows PC users if you didn’t want to pay to convert.Pros: it’s very flexible, and it’s free. You can tell it how to convert your files in many ways – by the screen dimensions, the frame rate, the quality/size (bit rate), even what kind of audio quality you want along with the video. In addition, you can queue up a series of files you want to convert without having to come back to your computer after each is done. It also can convert files in a much shorter time than iTunes or Quicktime Pro – as low as around 15 minutes or so for a 14-minute video.Cons: the major downside to Videora is that it is not particularly easy to use. It’s free and the people who created it haven’t come out with a new version for over two months. It’s beta software, which means not all the bugs or user interface design issues have been worked out, and while they have a very useful discussion forum, it’s the fellow users who provide the answers, not the programmers, so they can only guess at some things, and of course can’t make fixes to the actual software. There is no real official support. If you are not afraid of spending some time trying to figure things out, it’s perfectly usable, but you will probably have to look through the discussion forums a lot as you run into inevitable problems. I’ve also posted a couple of entries (here and here) myself that go into a fair amount of detail about converting using Videora that might be helpful.
ffmpegX	ffmpegX is a UNIX application that was ported to Mac OSX (which is a varant of UNIX). While it may be more streightforward than the typical UNIX command-line application, it may not be as simple as many other programs made for the Mac. Since I don’t own a Mac, I can’t really speak to how simple this is to use or how well it works, but the engine it uses is used by many of these other converters Windows. If you are a Mac user and have used this, some feedback would be great!
iSquint	Another free Mac converter, iSquint looks like it will give you a lot of recommendations and hand-holding, but still let you tweak settings if you need to. Since I don’t have a Mac, I couldn’t evaluate it directly, but it seems to be the preferred converter out there for Macs. If anyone has used it, feedback would be great
3gp Converter	3gp Converter is a free Windows program that I don’t think tons of people use or even know about. It apparently is developed by a developer or group of developers in Japan. They don’t have an English language site, but here’s a Google-translated site which you might be able to at least glean a little from. Fortunately the program itself does have different language versions and there’s a simple but good tutuorial on how to use it here. The program itself is very simple. You just drag your video file onto it, and it converts it. It lets you pick a few different options in terms of bit rate settings, that yield a H.264 variations, and one high-quality, high resolution MPEG4 SP version suitable for outputting to TV. It converted all the video files I through at it, but I didn’t test every conceivable file, so their could be ones that it still has problems with. Still, for a free program, there’s no reason not to use this one until (or if) you run into problems.The one problem I did encounter was that it doesn’t seem to be able to format widescreen videos properly. There are no options for dealing with different aspect ratios, so it just stuffs everything into the same standard dimensions, so widescreen movies get squeezed and so look wrong.Maybe a new version will deal with this (the developer seems to come out with a new version somewhat regularly, although the last version was almost two months ago), and looking at their configuration files, one might just be able to change the resolutions there, but that would mean some extra work that detracts from the simplicity of this program.I would say, though, that for programs that are not widescreen, this is by far the easiest program I’ve used, albeit with few ways to customize the output. But if you’re looking for something that requires no learning curve and still gives you more output options than iTunes and does it several times faster, this is probably your best bet. It also happens to be one of only two programs (the other being iTunes) out of all of these (shareware and commercial ones included), that automatically adds the video to your iTunes library.
Nero Recode	I know that a number of people have gotten this Windows application to work, but I could not. Nero Recode is one of the many products within the collection of products branded as Nero. Initially I was confused about this and thought you could only use it if you bought the commercial product called Nero Ultra. That includes Nero Recode, but you can also download Nero Recode for free.In any case, I was able to convert files that would play through iTunes, but no matter how careful I was to customize these according to the settings that I knew would work on the iPod, these videos would not transfer. So, while you might be able to get this to work for you if you work at it, it’s probably not going to be easy for the beginner. It lets you see a lot of information and particularly for DVD conversions (you still need a seperate program to remove a copy-protected DVD’s encryption - see below), it looks like it would be very useful as far as picking a given audio track, subtitles, etc.

* What does this mean and why would you care? When converting a video file, just like when converting an audio file, you can make the end product smaller (so that you can fit more on your iPod). This size goes hand in hand with the quality of the video and is expressed as a measurement of “bit rate.” The higher the bit rate, the higher the quality and the bigger the file (and the longer the conversion will take to some extent). In addition to how small you make the file itself, you can also change the actual dimensions of the video as seen on the screen. ITunes just converts everything to the exact dimensions of the iPod’s screen, which is 320×240 pixels. In most cases, that’s fine, but if you ever want to be able to show these videos on a TV (or your computer), the small dimensions blown up to a 19″ Monitor or 27″ TV will not look good at all! More ondisplaying your video from your iPod to your TV below.

Of course, you don’t have to go with the free options at all. Even if you are on a budget, most of the options that cost money are only around $30, and hey, you spent $300-400 for that iPod and probably a bunch more for a case and/or some other accessories, right? So what’s another $30 for a program that will do all your video conversion chores? These are all Windows programs - I’ve yet to see any for the Mac that aren’t free except for Quicktime Pro which is now somewhat irrelevant now that iTunes can do the same conversions it can

The problem really is in choosing the right one of these programs for you. There are a growing number of these programs and probably a lot of similarity between them. I’ve tried out a bunch of these to test them, but haven’t spent nearly the time on them that I have with Videora, so my personal recommendation would actually be to read these micro reviews and then download and try out the ones that sound good to you (or all of them for that matter), since they all have trial versions for free download. Those trial versions have limitations that make them unusable or at least very impractical for anything but testing purposes, but they will give you a good idea about how easy they are to use and how well they work..

Options at an Added Price
PQDVD	PQ DVD to iPod Video Converter is the application that I seem to hear mentioned about most online, probably because it also lets you record DVD’s (see below). You can convert many different types of video files with it and specify quality/size (bit rate) settings, dimensions of the screen, whether you want to crop or stretch the image to fill more/less of the iPod’s (or your TV’s) screen, etc. It makes many of these options fairly easy to understand in a graphical, uncluttered way, and the conversion (as with most of these non-free programs), is pretty quick. However, PQDVD doesn’t have quite the flexibility of some of the others. Basically you sacrifice some flexibility for ease-of-use.	$35
Cucusoft	Cucusoft iPod Video Converter is more flexible in some ways than PQDVD, as it lets you specify the type of encoding you want to use (similar to Videora). But unlike Videora, it also gives you recommendations for the best choice of settings and also gives you more information about how various settings will affect your final video. Cucusoft also, like Videora, has a batch feature so that you can give it multiple files and then let it run for a long time without the need to come back and tell it to convert each and every one. Unfortunately Cucusoft was the only program of the ones here that I got to work in the first place which didn’t automatically determine the correct dimensions for the widescreen video I fed it, so this means a bit more work in figuring that out for different videos.	$29
Xilisoft	Xilisoft iPod Video Converter lets you customize settings, but doesn’t give you much help in this area. There are pull-down lists of possible settings, but many of these have just one option, and so if you don’t like it, you have to type in your own. If you don’t know what you’re doing, this could very easily create files that aren’t compatible in some way with the iPod. So it seems that it doesn’t provide much in the way of ease-of-use. To me, this seems the closest program in some ways to the free Videora, except that it doesn’t allow the user to set up different profiles for different types of convesions, and it costs $30.I attempted to convert a test .avi file (which converted fine on all the other products), but the end result couldn’t even be added to my iTunes library, let alone to the iPod. This was using the default settings for the program. Perhaps I needed to change them, but the point is here that this is not a program for beginners so I’m not sure why anyone would pay $30 for it when a similarly difficult program is available for free.	$29
ImTOO	I’m not sure which of these programs came first, but it appears that ImTOO is just a rebranding of Xilisoft or visa versa. The prices for each of the conversion programs, the dvd-ripping programs, and the bundles are identical. And if you look at the screenshots of Xilisoft and of ImTOO, and you will see they are also virtually identical!	$29
WinAVI	WinAVI 3GB/MP4/PSP/iPod Video Converter (maybe they need to come up with a catchier name?) has some interesting features which I’m not sure I’d use, like being able to flip the image upside down and soften it. (What I’d really like to see is something that would increase the brightness of an image since some darker videos are difficult to see if you have a protective screen that produces glare and you’re not in a dark room.)WinAVI lets you control the dimensions of the video and the bit rate settings, although the numbers they use seem not to coincide with what the standard bit rate options are. It will also let you split the output file into multiple files, or merge multiple input files into one output file. I’m not sure what I would use those for, but I know some people have uses for these features. A batch mode also adds to the functionality.	$25
AVOne	AVOne iPod Video Converter seems the least polished of any of these programs. First of all, it took much longer to convert the file. It’s batch feature doesn’t seem to work. It has only a few built-in profile setups, and while it lets you create your own profiles with many settings options, it gives you absolutely no help in figuring out what those settings should be. Finally, after a couple of tries of specifying exactly where I wanted my output file to be saved, after converting (which took a lot longer than the other programs), I simply could not locate any output file on my computer.	$25
Total Video Recorder	Total Video Recorder is the most expensive converter. It is fairly easy to use and understand, and has a lot of customization features if you want to tweak things. Unfortunately, while it was able to convert some video files, it was unable to convert one that I had downloaded from a digital camcorder. The other programs didn’t have such a problem, except for Videora which also couldn’t convert it. The resulting file when played in iTunes was covered with green and red blocks constantly moving. At first I thought this was feature that prevented one from using a trial version for real use, but after converting another file that wasn’t from my video camera, it played fine in iTunes. I was able to transfer both files to my iPod. So far so good, except when I tried to play either one, not only did the iPod not play the files, but playing them actually caused the iPod to reset! I did not use any special settings for these conversions, so while there may be some ways to avoid these problems, it’s another case of a program that takes a lot of extra work. While I didn’t mind this extra work for a free program like Videora, it seems a bit too much when paying $45! Some people have no problem with this program, so, as I stated at the beginning, you might want to try it out - even though I didn’t get it working doesn’t mean you might not have great luck with it.	$45

Once you convert your video to an iPod-compatible format, you still need to add them to your iTunes library in order to have them transferred to your iPod, so check out the section about doing this above.

ITunes to iPod

As I mentioned above, if your video isn’t compatible with the iPod, it won’t transfer to it even if you’ve been able to add it to iTunes and even if iTunes can play your video. iTunes can play many kinds of video files, but as I’ve detailed above, the iPod has a lot more limitations. However, there does appear to be a problem that some people have run into when trying to transfer video to their iPod even when it is compatible. That problem is in a setting in iTunes that turns off automatic transfers of videos. Some people have suggested that this is actually the default setting, so I would recommend also double-checking that you have this set correctly. You will need to first plug your iPod into your computer, and when your computer recognizes the iPod, choose Preferences from the Edit menu. Then go to the iPod tab, which is the second from the left. Here make sure that the topmost “Automatically update all videos” is selected:

Note that this only applies to those who have their iTunes set to automatically synch their files. If you have it set for manual transfer, then this tab will be disabled. In this case, like with music files, you just have to drag the video file from your iTunes library onto the iPod icon in iTunes in order to transfer a video to it.

DVD’s

For DVD’s, it can be a little more complicated than converting a video clip that you download off the Internet from one of the free sources I’ve mentioned, or via the iTunes Music Store. DVD’s were never meant to be converted or copied. They contain an encryption scheme called CSS (Content Scrambling System) that is supposed to prevent this. Within just a couple of years after DVD’s hit the market, though, CSS was cracked and this crack, known as DeCSS, became widely available on the net both as pure code, as well as parts of numerous programs designed to allow the average user to “decrypt” their DVD’s. Depending on which country you live in, these programs may or may not be legal to use. The whole issue of legality is very confusing. On the one hand, in the U.S., “fair use” seems to dictate that one should be able to freely make backup copies of a DVD you own for personal use. On the other hand, part of the Digital Milenium Copyright Act specifically forbids compromising the copy-protection for a DVD. There are numerous court cases that are trying to determine exactly what is legal and what isn’t, but in the mean time, such programs are available and being used ubiquitously, making things that much more uncertain.

In any case, in order to put your DVD’s into an iPod compatible format, you will need to transfer the file to your hard drive, remove the encryption, and then finally convert it to a format that’s compatible with the iPod. This can require one or two different programs depending on what kind of functional is included. Again, there are both free ones and ones that have a price tag:

Free Options
DVD Decryptor	The developers of this Windows application were forced to remove it and they were eventually bought by Macrovision. One can find the application on the net, but it’s legality is in question. It will allow you to break the encoding of a DVD and transfer it to your hard drive, after which various conversion applications can be used to make it iPod-compatible. Videora has a tutorial on their site on how to use it to create the inital file. Be forwarned, though, this is not a program designed with ease-of-use in mind.	$0
DVDFab Decryptor	DVDFab Decrypter is another program that’s similar to DVD DecrypterThis is another program similar to DVD Decryptor but with a simpler infterface. It copies the files from the DVD to one’s hard drive and removes the encryption in the process. Just note that it, like DVD Decrypter, will not create a file that is iPod compatible. You will still need to convert it using one of the programs listed above.	$0
Fair Use Wizard LE	This Windows application takes a slightly more user-friendly approach than DVD Decrypter, guding you through the process of converting your DVD a little more. But it’s also different in that it doesn’t just decrypt, but decrypts and converts to an xVid format video file. This process itseld could take a couple of hours, and then on top of this you will have to reconvert it to an iPod-compatible format. The same site has a $20 program that will supposedly convert to iPod-compatible formats (see below).	$0
HandBrake	HandBrake is the one free Mac option that will remove the encryption on a DVD and save the resulting file to your hard drive. Since I don’t own a Mac, I couldn’t evaluate this myself, but if anyone does own this, feedback would be great.	$0
Options at an Added Price
AnyDVD	This Windows Application will remove the encryption from a DVD, after which you will need another program to convert it to an iPod-compatible format. At first I thought it might be more of a wizard than DVD Decrypter, but really what it’s meant to do is to do the decryption transparently. That way you can tell a conversion program to look at one of the files on the DVD itself, or maybe you still need to copy it to your hard drive, but the decryption happens as you copy. The problem is that there’s no good way of figuring out what files are for what on the DVD. Sure some may be simple if there’s only one file or a few with similar names, but that’s not always the case. For some movies, you have many files each representing a different chapter. On DVD’s of TV episodes, you can have one or more files representing each episode	$39
PQDVD	Yes, I already mentioned PQDVD above, but it also will let you convert DVD’s. However, I’m not sure if it actually removes the encryption from DVD’s like some of these other programs, but rather streams the dvd video at faster than normal speed and somehow “captures” it and converts it on the fly. You will actually see the DVD playing while it’s converting. I’m not sure if I was simply doing something wrong or if my system did not have enough free memory or processor speed, but while it did convert a small clip for me successfully, when I played it back both in iTunes as well as on my iPod, the audio was badly distorted.	$35
Cucusoft	Cucusoft also makes a DVD to iPod Converter for Windows which seems to work very similarly to PQDVD, but gives the advanced user more access to custom settings. Of course many of these settings will be meaningless if you are at all a beginner at this stuff. I also experienced the same audio distorions with this product as with PQDVD, so chances are it’s a problem with audio on my computer. The other thing I could not figure out with this program was how to limit the program to just a specified length of time. This would be helpful for recording a bunch of TV episodes on a DVD into seperate files (especially if these are not seperated into seperate files on the DVD), but it doesn’t seem like there’s any easy way to do this here, whereas in PQDVD, one can scroll through to find exactly where one episode ends and another begins, and then you can specify when you want the start of the recording and the end to be.	$30
Xilisoft	Xilisoft makes a DVD to iPod Converter for Windows as well, and it seems to work in a similar way as the previous two. Unfortunately I could not get it to work at all. Others I know have been able to get it to work, and I know there have been some complaints concerning audio syncing. But without even being able to record anything myself, it’s impossible for me to say much about this tool.	$29
Fair Use Wizard	Fair Use Wizard also offers a “Full Edition” that provides some additional features. Whether those features are worth it, I’m not sure, and there’s no way to try them out, since the Lite edition is the only one you can download from their site without actually paying. However, from what I can tell from the Lite Edition, it has some option for iPod Video, so it might be useful as an all-in-one DVD conversion tool.	$20
Total Video Recorder	Total Video Recorder also has a DVD recording facility that works somewhat like PQDVD and CUCUSoft, except that it doesn’t actually play the DVD while recording, at least not in a way that’s visible to you. It offers a good deal of flexibility and it’s pretty easy and straightforward. Unlike PQDVD and CUCUSoft, when I played the sample I had recorded in iTunes, there were no problems with the audio. This could have just been a fluke, but it was still very promising. Then I transferred the video over to my iPod and started to play it. The same thing happened as with the non-DVD video clips I had converted with this same program - when starting to play the file, my iPod would reset itself. Not good! Again, maybe I was doing something wrong, or I wasn’t setting something in the right way, but for a $45 program, I really don’t think it should be reseting my iPod unless I really screw with the settings in a very creative way!	$45
DVDFab Express, Gold, Platinum	DVDFab Decryptor is a free program, but the same developer has made several other versions that have various other capabilities which may be useful for some people, but aren’t necessary to get one’s DVD video onto an iPod. Still, if these extra features appeal to you and you can afford the price, than it might be a good option. I chose not to try these out myself since I successfully tested the free version and can’t imagine these would be that different.	$40-60

TV Playing

One other issue that I alluded to above is that you can actually take your iPod to a friend’s house (or on vacation, or on a business trip, etc., etc.) and play a video for them not just on the iPod’s screen, but on a TV that you hook your iPod to in the same way that you would hook your DVD player to your TV. Unfortunately the iPod can’t do this “out of the box” but instead requires the purchase of an additional cable. Apple sells one for $30, although you can get it for a lot cheaper at Amazon.com or even cheaper at Handhelditems.com and a retractable one to boot.

Because the iPod screen is so small, the standard iPod-compatible video is pretty small in resolution – 320×240 pixels. When this tiny image is then blown up to fit a much larger screen, everything gets that much fuzzier. In order to avoid this, you can convert the video in such a way that the resolution is higher, and some of the applications I’ve listed will actually guide you with the words “TV.” However, not all programs let you do this, even if you do it yourself with customized settings. If you convert something to a higher resolution for this type of usage, it will come at the price of added conversion time and storage space, and you won’t be able to convert to just any resolution - at some point you also bump up against a limitation of what the iPod can handle, so you will never get, for example, a DVD-quality video image played from your iPod to a TV. It may look very good, and you might not even be able to tell the difference on a small TV (19″ or smaller) between a video played through your iPod and one from a DVD player. Still, for anything bigger than a 19″ set, the picture will be inferior. And compared to a true high definition picture, forget it! If you do want to convert to higher resolutions, I would recommend taking a look at the two entries (here and here) I posted about converting with Videora. Whether you use Videora or not, these will at least give you some ideas about what issues to look for.

Final Notes

When Apple came out with the Video iPod back in late September of last year, they did it very tentatively – at least as far as video was concerned. They provided only a handful of TV series in their iTunes Music Store, and in order to make other sources of video play on the iPod, Apple would only tell you that you needed to purchase their QuickTime Pro at $30 additional charge. As you can see, in the proceeding three and a half months, a slew of new content has come out both within the iTunes Music Store and on the net in free form. In addition, many companies have been developing programs that make getting your videos onto your iPod. It’s still a little confusing for the average consumer, though, but if the progress during these first few months is any indication, things should get easier and easier, sooner rather than later. In the mean time, I hope this guide has helped some of you get your mind around the various tasks, options, and concepts concerning getting video onto your iPod.

Since writing my last entry, I hadn’t done too much with video on my iPod other than download a few video podcasts. However, this last week I decided to put an episode of West Wing on the iPod. West Wing is actually in widescreen format. I encoded it with a 640×360 resolution accordingly and this produced what I thought was a flawless program. No banding even the resolution was higher than that of the iPod screen. This made some sense because the banding that I noticed for the full-frame clip I was using for my testing was mainly in the top 10th of the screen.

(Note: after writing this article, I’ve done much more research on putting videos on an iPod and wrote up a new article that covers this in more basic terms - A Beginner’s Guide to Video for the IPod. I urge you to read that article first, especially if you don’t have much or any experience with digital video, the iPod, or both together)

Great, I thought! Now I can at least use one format for displaying on the iPod or the TV. But wait, it gets better!

I decided to copy an episode of Six Feet Under onto the iPod and test out another hypothesis by the moderator of the Videora iPod Converter forum, Sketchy, that you should make sure that your resolution was divisible by 16, since MPEG4 divides the screen up into 16×16 blocks. 640 and 360 are both divisible by 16[it turns out 360 is not divisible by 16, oops, but read on], so maybe that was the key to flawless, higher-resolution video on the iPod. The previous 544 x 408 resolution wasn’t [and it turns out that it wasn’t even the highest resolution allowable - it’s 552 x 414]. 544 is divisible, but 408 isn’t. In order to maintain the 1:33 aspect ratio, the highest resolution you can use that doesn’t go over the total pixel count of 230,400, but which is still divisible by 16 in both width and height, is 512 x 384[oops again, it turns out that it is 528×400] So, I encoded the program using this and voila, perfect-looking video!

Great news again, right? Now I can do the same thing with full-frame videos and just use that one resolution for both iPod viewing and TV viewing. Sure 512 x 384 isn’t HD, or even DVD quality. But it’s perfectly watchable on even my 34″ TV. Yet again, though, it gets better, or perhaps better and worse at the same time?

I thought I should update the spreadsheet with this information, so I dug out the old 55-second clip, and proceeded to convert it again but this time using the new 512 x 384 resolution instead of the older 544 x 408. I did this for all the various modes, 1-pass and 2-pass, and put them on the iPod. I started watching them and they all looked great! This wasn’t a big surprise, since the Six Feet Under episode also looked great. But here is the weird part – I also reloaded the old 544 x 408 clips for comparison sake and when I started watching some of these, they also looked absolutely fine! No banding whatsoever! I was flummoxed.

So I bring my iPod into the bedroom where my wife is still half awake and ask her to look at these since I’m starting to not trust my own eyes anymore. Only when I play them for her, the banding is back! And it’s not just back on the old clips, but the new clips as well. Huh? When I was first playing them back in the office, my iPod was plugged into the computer getting charged, so I thought, hey, maybe that has something to do with it. So I plug it into the wall and try again. No go, the banding is still there. I than decided to try one more thing – I reset the iPod. Once I did this, no more banding was visible!

So, to conclude, the problems with banding are not unavoidable. If you experience them, just reset your iPod. My guess is that putting the iPod in and out of video mode can produce this artifact, but if you just watch one program straight through, there shouldn’t be an issue. Of course resetting can be a nuisance, but if you were interested in only storing one format for a given file which you plan to view on both the iPod and a TV (or your computer), then it might not be that big a deal.

Based on this further development, I’ve edited the spreadsheet and included the new information. Based on this new information, my conclusion is a bit different. Basically, if you never see the possibility of wanting to play these files on a TV or computer, then you should stick with one of the 320×240 resolutions, preferably one that has a higher bit rate that would produce less artifacting. As I said above, H.264 > CBR, 1 pass is a good option since it’s fast to convert and small in size. This will allow you to convert an hour’s worth of video in a little over an hour and will produce a file that is about 380MB.

However, if you do want to have a single file for multiple uses – iPod viewing, TV viewing, computer viewing, then choose one of the 544 x 408 552 x 414 resolution ones, again with the higher bit rate (or lower Qscale). I’ve found I can’t really tell the difference between the higher bit rate (lower Qscale) versions. They all look incredibly crisp and clear, with no artifacting. However, the one that seems to come out on top in terms of both a smaller size file as well as a faster conversion is the plain MPEG4>CBR yet again. For a one-hour piece of video, the conversion time will likely be between two and three hours, perhaps closer to three. The file size will be about 1GB. That’s not really much better than the video stored on a DVD, which is definitely better quality.

Obviously the tradeoff of having the flexibility of one file for all purposes is that it will take a lot longer to convert your video and it will also take up considerably more space – maybe three times as much! For some people, though, this is a good compromise. For others who want to store more on their iPod but still want the possibility of displaying their videos on a TV via the iPod, yet another option might be worth the additional time – actually encoding it in both a 320×240 version specifically for viewing on the iPod’s screen, and an additional version at 544 x 408 552 x 414. This latter version could be archived on your hard drive or even DVD-R, although at 1GB/hour, you might need a lot of DVD’s to store a big collection!

Personally, I don’t have the time, patience or storage space to convert my DVD collection, so I suppose I will just convert things as I feel the urge to watch them and will probably use the higher resolution unless I have no intention of watching a given video via the TV…

There are many programs currently available that will convert video of various kinds to a format compatible with the video iPod. While none of these are prohibitive in cost, I didn’t feel like spending lots of time downloading trial versions to figure out which one might work best, nor did I feel like spending on one that a few people like only to discover there’s another that actually does a better job. Since the video iPod is so new, many software companies that make converters are just now modifying their products to include conversion options for the iPod. Maybe in a month or two the dust will have settled a little more and we’ll start seeing some in-depth reviews comparing some of these applications to one another.

(Note: after writing this article, I’ve done much more research on putting videos on an iPod and wrote up a new article that covers this in more basic terms - A Beginner’s Guide to Video for the IPod. I urge you to read that article first, especially if you don’t have much or any experience with digital video, the iPod, or both together)

In the mean time, as far as I’m aware, the only free program that’s been available is one from the same people who brought you PSP Video 9 (a video converter for the PSP) and Videora. The name of the program is “Videora iPod Converter” and it has a wide (and sometimes overwhelming for a newbie) assortment of settings one can manipulate for your conversions. Aside from the obvious ones like resolution and bit rate, there are others like Qscale, and conversion mode that are not nearly as well known.

As with much freeware, there’s no real documentation available, nor is the program very straightforward to use. You need to create a profile for a given collection of settings, or use one of the programs presets. If you choose to use your own settings, you’re in no way guaranteed that they will work with the iPod. You may be able to get them into iTunes but they won’t transfer to the iPod if some setting is off.

A Quick Note: I’ve done some additional testing and posted some updates to this entry, so if you’ve found it via Google, please see my Converting Videos for iPod, Take 2 entry after you’ve read this one.

Screenshot of Videora iPod Converter converting a file

Screenshot of Videora iPod Converter Profile Screen

The two settings that this happens for most often is bitrate and resolution. The iPod will only handle resolutions that add up to 230,400 pixels - whatever the width and height dimensions are, multiplied they can’t add up to more than this number or the file won’t transfer. Similarly, for H.264 files, iTunes will not transfer it if it has a higher bit rate than 768Kbps – although at least in this latter case there is a hack to get around this, thanks to a user on the Videor iPod Converter board named DaProphecy. Apparently the chip in the iPod that plays video has the ability to play higher quality video than Apple lets on in their specifications. iTunes prevents you from transferring in this higher bitrate despite it being playable, so you basically have to trick iTunes into transferring the file. This, of course, is ridiculous and should not require a hack to get around. Hopefully Apple will update iTunes and make this a non-issue.

Because of the massive numbers of settings, and no real clue as to which ones would work best in which cases, I determined to spend an inordinate amount of time transcoding a 55-second video clip into as many of these as made sense at the time. In all, I made 40 different conversions, although I’m sure I barely scratched the surface in terms of what I could have done. Still, I wanted to get a general sense of what each setting would do, how they would compare to each other in terms of the amount of time the conversion took, how big the file was, and what the quality of the video was both on the iPod and when exported out to a TV. I figured if I was going to convert my 200+ DVD library to video files for the iPod, that I should be fairly certain what settings to pick so that I don’t waste time converting to something which in the end wasn’t as efficient as another format in terms of time and storage space.

I set about creating an Excel spreadsheet, linked here, which contains all my data, as well as my impressions of quality. The first sheet shows various conversions to H.264, whereas the second sheet displays results for conversions to MPEG4. Both of these are compatible with the iPod.

To summarize my findings, much of it was predictable. Usually the higher the bit rate, the better the quality, although occasionally it was hard to tell the difference. When exported to TV, the higher the resolution, the sharper the image. However, there were some findings that I hadn’t expected. First of all, making a 2-pass conversion usually did not improve the video noticeably, but did double the time needed to convert. File sizes for 2-pass conversions were almost always about the same give or take, the only big exception being MPEG4 > QC-VBR mode, which decreased the file size by about 2/3, although unfortunately this smaller file size also equated with much poorer quality video.

While I probably will not use it extensively, the iPod’s ability to pipe the audio and video out to a TV is something that really interested me. While critics complain about the size of the iPod’s screen for video, you can’t complain about it if you pipe that video out a 27” (or greater) monitor. I own a 34” widescreen TV which I suppose is about the same as a 27” standard (4:3) TV and used that for testing these conversions (as well as viewing them on the iPod itself). One thing I found interesting was that some video artifacts were much more noticeable on the iPod than on the TV– for example some pixilation when clashing colors like red and green were adjacent to each other. Even some of the “blotchiness” of certain colors seemed less noticeable sometimes on that large screen. I was viewing it from about 5 feet away, which I think is equivalent to holding the iPod about 5 inches from my face! I expected all the defects to be much more obvious, but perhaps the interlacing of a TV screen somehow smoothes out some of these.

What I did find was that some of the higher resolution conversions I made, when played on my TV, were excellent in quality. Perhaps not quite DVD quality, but maybe equivalent to a VHS tape if not even cable or even satellite. Unfortunately, these same files, when played on the iPod, had artifacts that made them difficult to watch – similar to the “banding” that one might get and worn VHS tape. This was particularly evident whenever the camera panned at all. So my initial hope that I’d be able to convert one file and have it play in optimal quality on both the iPod as well as the TV was not to be. The lower resolution conversions are not terrible when viewed on the TV, but it’s pretty obvious that something’s off, at least from 5 feet away. The picture just isn’t very sharp, even with the best conversions. It’s a little like watching a 30-year-old TV.

As far as the conversions themselves go, they took a bit longer than I expected. Even the shortest one took about 15% more time than the clip itself, and the worst took 700% as long! Then again, you may have different results. I converted these on a 2.5-year-old laptop with a 2Ghz P4 processor and 1.25GB of RAM. Very possibly you have something newer and faster. File sizes varied greatly as well, from a small 3.4MB to a whopping 25.6MB for just this small clip. Luckily, the 2^nd Pass, which normally doubled the time to convert, was usually not a factor in terms of quality. And file sizes didn’t always equate with quality either.

This photo was taken from my TV. It was a lower bitrate setting and you can see blotchiness, pixelation, and other artifacts pretty clearly.

Here’s another picture off of my TV, but this one at a much higher bitrate. While still not crystal clear, it definitely looks much better than the first image!

I have to divide my conclusion into to separate categories – best for iPod and best for iPod to TV. If one is mainly concerned with playing on the iPod itself, it seems the winner is probably H.264 > CBR at 768Kbps, 1 Pass. This has one of the smallest file sizes and fastest conversion times. It’s certainly possible that some may find some of the other modes to edge it out slightly, but most of those modes produce files that are at least double the size, maybe more, and take at least a little more time to convert. But if storage isn’t an issue (on the iPod itself, even at the higher 60GB level it still IS an issue), and your system is incredibly fast, or you have extra machines to do conversions for you, you may find it more worth it to try some of the other settings.

For iPod to TV, the winner seems to be MPEG4 > CBR at 544×408, 2500Kbps and one pass. This had one of the shortest conversion times and the smallest file size for a higher-resolution conversion, and rivaled or beat all of the other such conversions.

A final disclaimer: these quality settings are of course subjective. As they say, your mileage may vary. I’ve compared a pretty limited range of video information in a 55-second clip, and I’ve done this for each of the 40 files on both the iPod and the TV. That’s a lot of stuff to compare even for a relatively short clip. I’ve already spent a week or so transcoding and then reviewing all of these, but I can see where to really scrutinize this stuff in detail, one would need a larger clip with a lot more variations in color, motion, etc., and have the luxury of being able to review each clip about 20 times to note various things down. I’m not even an expert at any of this and so my impressions are from someone who is not a videophile per se, but just a gadget freak who also loves to watch DVD’s. So please take this all with a grain of salt. I did the best estimation I could within my limited timeframe, expertise, and tools, but I can’t claim this as being at all definitive. I look forward, in fact, to those who might be able to clarify, confirm, or dispute certain findings so that a more accurate picture for all can be obtained. In the mean time, I hope this serves as a decent primer for those who, like myself, found themselves lost in the sea of possible settings with no idea how they might translate into quality, time, and space in the real world.

Update (12/23/05): It turns out this is far from the end of the story. I’ve discovered some new peculiarities with video for the iPod that caused me to write a whole new blog entry, so if you’ve found this article via a google search or a link on a discussion forum, etc., you might want to check out my newest entry, Converting Videos for iPod, Take 2.

Scrubs is one of my favorite shows on TV these days. Probably the only comedy show that I watch on a regular basis. The first season of Scrubs is coming out on DVD next month so I am helping Buena Vista get the word out on my DVDMon.com site. You have a chance of winning a box set of the first season if you fill out a short survey (takes about 5 minutes) about which of five commercials you like the best and least. The nice thing is that you find out immediately if you’ve won or not. You have an additional chance of winning one if you send a link to the contest to a friend. I’ve never won a contest like this online but hopefully one of you Scrubs fans will. If you do happen to win one following the link on my DVDMON.com site, please let me know!

I purchased the Humax DRT-800 combination TiVo and DVD player/burner a little under 3 months ago and have been using the unit constantly since then. I have intended on writing a review for a while now, so I’m finally getting around to that, sorry for the hold up!

I’ve only read one other comprehensive review of the Humax DRT-800, and most of it talked about TiVo features that are on all TiVo units. In this review, I thought I’d talk mostly about the additional features that the DRT-800 has over and above all regular TiVo units, although I will touch briefly on the DRT-800’s support for normal TiVo functionality for those who aren’t as familiar with it.

TiVo, as most know by now, records programs off of TV like a VCR, but it records the digital bits of a show as a file onto a hard drive inside the unit as opposed to an analog tape. TiVo’s are basically computers running the Linux operating system with a video capture card and a hard drive. Special software provides the TiVo interface that allows you to record shows automatically based on preferences you set manually and/or the unit learns based on what you record. You can record whole seasons of shows and if it changes its schedule (permanently or temporarily) the TiVo will know, and change its recording schedule accordingly. It does this by continually downloading a schedule of upcoming programs over a phone line or an Internet connection. The DRT-800 contains TiVo with all the functionality that a stand-alone series 2 TiVo has, although no TiVo ToGo yet (which I’ll cover later).

As for the TiVo functionality of the DRT-800, I’ve only had one issue with recording regular programs. I’ve noticed a number of times that while watching a recorded show, the screen would go blank (actually grey) for an instant, and then come back on. This might happen once or twice during a show, or not at all. I thought perhaps my unit was defective, so I called Humax and they suggested a reboot. This seemed to solve the problem but then I noticed it again a few days later. My wife determined that it corresponds to turning my TV on and off. I haven’t confirmed this yet, and I’ve not seen anyone else yet to report a similar issue, so it may just be an odd combination of my particular TV and perhaps a DRT-800 with a special issue… Others online have talked about having problems with “crushed blacks” (no detail in shadows) and lots of digital artifacts even at the highest recording quality setting. But some of this may be the fault of the output connection. Using an S-Video cable instead of a composite seems to clean up a lot of problems. I myself haven’t noticed anything terrible, but I am using S-Video and this is also my first TiVo, so I can’t really compare it to anything other than live TV. The picture quality is undoubtedly worse than live TV, but then I have a very nice 34″ high definition Sony CRT with a DirectTV satellite receiver, so even at standard definition, my picture is extremely good. Taking this signal and converting it to analog and back to digital is going to wreak at least some havoc!

DVD Player

The DRT-800 has a DVD player/burner in it, and you can use it to play all your regular movie DVD’s. It has progressive scan for those with high-definition displays, and a high-quality component output for your TV. Because it doubles as a DVD player, this means you can save space and wires that would normally be devoted to a completely separate DVD player unit. There are, however, a couple of disadvantages to using the DRT-800 as your DVD player. One minor one is that in order to play a DVD, you need to go through the TiVo environment, instead of just being able to plop it in and hit play (or just letting it play by default). A more annoying issue, though, is the fact that the remote that comes with the TiVo, does not have a lot of the buttons that you would find on a stand-alone DVD player. It has an angle button and a menu and top menu button, but no subtitle button, nor an audio button, and it’s track forward and back functions are unintuitively assigned to the channel up/down button. This is not a HUGE deal, but it still would have been nice to have a full compliment of buttons for the DVD player function.

DVD Burner

The DVD drive in the DRT-800 functions not only to PLAY DVD’s, but also to BURN them, and this is where the unit really earns it’s extra value. The main thing that people will use this feature for is to burn programs that they’ve recorded with the TiVo itself, but there are other things you can burn as well, as I will explain.

Before talking about the actual process of burning a program to DVD, I thought I’d write a little about DVD formats that are used by the DRT-800 and what this means in a practical sense to the user. The DRT-800 can burn DVD “recordables” (write can only be written to once and never erased) and DVD “rewritables” (which you can write to and erase from much like a VHS tape or floppy disk). You can’t just by any recordable or rewritable format. For recordables, you have to use discs labeled DVD-R, and for rewritabled, it’s DVD-RW. You can pick up DVD-R’s for as cheap as $.25 per DVD on sale, but DVD-RW’s are often much more expensive – maybe $1.50 per disc at the cheapest? So why would you even bother with DVD-RW’s? I wouldn’t myself, except that I’ve found that it’s nice to have some on hand to record stuff that you know you only need for a short period of time. And the reason you might want some temporary storage space? Well, the DRT-800 comes with an 80GB hard drive that is rated at “80 hours” of playback. But like all TiVo’s, this 80 hours is a somewhat disengenous claim, because it is only valid when using the TiVo’s poorest quality level. At the best quality level, it’s closer to 18 hours for the DRT-800. You’d be surprised at how fast this can fill up if you record even a handful of shows each week at the best quality level. Get busy for several days and the hard drive gets so full that your programs start being deleted in order to make room for new ones! One solution is to upgrade your hard drive through one of the services that either do this themselves or will sell you a kit, like Weaknees or ptvupgrade. But this can cost an additional $200 or more over the already $400 you probably spent on the DRT-800. So, getting ten DVD-RW discs automatically expands your effective capacity from 18 hours at best quality to 28 hours, as you are able to offload some of the programs onto disc.

Ok, so how exactly does recording to DVD work? In order to burn a program on the TiVo to disc, you can do it a couple of ways. You choose the dvd recorder from the main TiVo menu, click on Save Programs to DVD, at which point you are presented with a convenient list of all your programs and how much space they will take up on the DVD.

You can check these off, but once the disc has programs assigned to it, the ones others on your TiVo that are too big to fit on the DVD get an X next to them and you can no longer choose them. The other way to do it is simply to go into your “Now Playing” program listing, pick one of the progams, and choose “Save to DVD or VCR” after which you have the option to pick additional programs if you choose.

How do the programs look once they are on DVD? TiVo units actually have slightly different recording qualities depending on which unit you buy. DirectTV units (which are satellite receivers with a TiVo built in), actually record the original digital signal from the satellite. There is no conversion from analog to digital and/or visa versa. It is a digital stream that is recorded digitally to the hard drive, so there’s no loss of quality. So-called “stand-alone” TiVo’s get fed an analog signal (that was either converted by a digital satellite receiver or a digital cable box, or was never digital to begin with) which it then has to convert or even reconvert into digital. With each conversion, there is additional chances for degradation of quality when compared to the source. Finally, with the DRT-800, there is yet another difference. The DRT-800 records shows in a format that’s a little different from other TiVo’s, a format that’s compatible with DVD’s. This type of recording, like the regular TiVo recording, “compresses” the original video source so that it will fit in a smaller space. In essence, the conversion makes shortcuts by creating equations that estimate colors and movement. One can set these shortcuts to be more aggressive and end up with a program that takes up less capacity on the hard drive of the unit, but by being more aggressive, the recording cannot be as accurate in some circumstances (such has subtle color shifts or lots of motion) and so you get “artifacts” (typical signs of digital compression) that make the quality of the image seem poorer. The DRT-800’s recording format looks to many like it is a bit poorer in quality still than a stand-alone TiVo’s, at least for the lower-quality settings. For the best quality, it seems more or less equivalent.

(This is actually a TiVo program that has been saved to DVD and is playing back on the DRT-800)

I keep mentioning space and capacity, and that is always on the mind of TiVo owners unless they have some mammoth 700-hour TiVo that they’ve custom built. Luckily the DRT-800 has what is effectively an unlimited storage capacity limited only by how many blank DVD’s you can affort to buy. Storing TiVo programs on DVD, though, can sometimes be a little tricky in terms of the space needed – which also depends on the quality setting that you used to record the given program. If you record programs in “Best” quality, then you will only be able to record an hour’s worth of programming per DVD. So movies will generally require at least two DVD’s, and sometimes three or even more! This is one reason why I generally don’t record movies onto DVD. It takes up too many discs at a decent quality level, and this makes it inconvenient to have to switch DVD’s in the middle of playback. The other reason I don’t record movies is because I have been spoiled by movies on actual commercial DVD’s. Not only do you not get the nice menu, the various special features like commentary tracks, etc., but also the quality of recordings on the DRT-800 even at the best level isn’t nearly as good as a DVD, at least if you are viewing one enahced for widescreen TV’s on a wisdescreen TV. I happen to have a widescreen TV, and while not humongous at 34″, it is still large enough to see a big difference in quality. One of my biggest issues with the DRT-800 is how it records movies that are in widescreen. Let me explain:

Aspect ratio (ie picture view dimensions) for TV’s is either 4:3 (the old standard) or 16:9 (The newer “widescreen”) Widescreen conforms more to what aspect ratios movies are filemed (or recorded) in. Widescreen TV’s are also invariably high-definition. When a DVD comes out of a movie and is available in “Widescreen” – this refers only to hwo it is formatted on the screen. In order to actually take advantage of the added resolution of Widescreen TV’s, it needs to say “enhanced for Widescreen TV’s” on it. If it doesn’t, it is simply “letterbox.” Letterbox refers to the bars on the top and bottom of the screen that one sees when watching a widescreen movie on a regular TV. That wide image doesn’t conform to the dimensions of the TV, so in order to fit the entire image, it needs to shrink it enough and doing so produces those bars. However, with a Widescreen TV, you SHOULD be able to see the entire image and have it cover the entire screen. But if it is not “enhanced” it simply shows the same letterboxed image formatted for a regular TV, and because you are viewing the image on a widescreen TV, not only do you get the bars on the top and bottom, but also on the sides! Now, Widescreen TV’s do have a way to compensate this. It let’s you “zoom” in on the image that takes up just a part of your screen so that it takes up the entire screen. However, this zooming doesn’t really do anything to the inherent QUALITY of the picture. It just magnifies it, and in doing so you still are working with the same smaller image but just blown up more so that imperfections are more visible. With a truly enhanced for widescreen DVD, the image takes full advantage of the wider aspect ration of the image, producing a higher-resolution image that is MUCH better than the alternative.

I’m not sure how regular TiVo’s record widescreen (high-def) programming. With the DRT-800, though, you can make such recordings. Of course, they will not be recorded IN high-definition, BUT, they ARE recorded in widescreen format. I’m fairly certain that this format is more or less equivalent to a DVD that has been “enhanced for Widescreen TV’s” because the quality is quite high, almost has high as a DVD, but not quite. The problem comes in when you want to take that recording on the DRT-800’s hard drive and transfer it onto a DVD. You would think this would support such widescreen formats, but it does not. When recording to a DVD, the DRT-800 takes that widescreen image and squeezes it into a standard 4:3 window that a non-widescreen TV would use. The result? That same image that DVD’s that aren’t enhanced for widescreen TV’s produces – black bars framing the entire image. I’ve contacted Humax about this issue and while they didn’t seem to understand the problem initially, they eventually just said that at the moment there’s no solution for the problem. Let’s hope that this changes, but somehow I think we might need to wait for a high-definition version of the DRT-800 for a real resolution.

Of course, recording regular non-HD, non-widescreen shows off of TV works fine, and since most shows are an hour or even a half hour, you can easily fit one or two shows at the best quality rating on each DVD. Unfortunately, you cannot span multiple programs onto multiple discs. So say for example that you have three 40-minute shows that you want to group together onto as few discs as possible. The DRT-800 cannot take those three shows and record them onto two DVD’s. The only way you can span something onto multiple discs is if it is just one program that takes up over an hour. This lack of flexibility is a bit of an annoyance because it means you may be forced to waste a lot of disc space that could otherwise be saved. But, lets say you don’t really care about the quality so much as wanting to capture as many shows on one DVD that you’re going to be taking with you on a trip. Well, in this case, you can get as much as 6 hours of programming on one DVD by setting the quality level down to the lowest “basic.” If you can’t stand the quality at that level, you can also fit a couple of hours on the second-to-highest “high” quality, or 4 hours at the next to lowest “medium” quality.

The DRT-800 can record at speeds up to 4X. This speed rating is based on how much data can be written per second. DVD-R’s or DVD-RW’s that are rated at higher speeds than 4X won’t do you any good – the recording will still be made at 4X speed. A Best quality recording that takes up 1-hour theoretically should record in ¼ of “real” time, or 15 minutes. In my tests, though, it’s less – as little as 9-10 minutes. Since I don’t record at lower recording levels, I can’t say whether lower quality recordings differ, but logically it would seem that it should be the same to record a full DVD of best quality recordings as a full DVD of lowest quality. Of course the lowest quality DVD as I said would contain six hours of programming as opposed to one for the best quality, so you could view this as being able to record 10 minutes per hour as opposed to less than two minutes per hour depending on the quality setting.