These Lootz Need to Go On a Diet
My parents hadn’t seen me in a while, and saw fit to shower me with some phat lootz. Normally whenever I visit, they’ll insist on buying me a shirt or something, but this time I received several expensive silk ties (since I have to wear ties to work now). That by itself was pretty awesome, but then I somehow ended up with a slick black 60 GB Video iPod.
I’ve never had an iPod before, but from seeing Bunky’s Nano, I know enough to leave it in the box until the protective case arrives.
A word of caution to prospective buyers: Scratches and smudges accumulate quickly, and they really show up on the black version. Blemishes are par for the course for all iPods, but they are much more noticeable on this big-screen iPod, especially since the display will be stared at for several minutes at a time. While watching the latest episode of Desperate Housewives, we kept noticing a sliver of a scratch in the middle of the screen.
One thing that I was excited about was the possibility of watching some anime on the iPod. First off, it is a pain to find a converter that will change .mkv and .ogm files to the .mp4 format, and then the subtitles are often too difficult to read. This varies from file to file, but in general only DVD quality subtitling is even legible. I was going to settle for Juuni Kokki dubbed, but alas only episodes 1-14 were in the .ogm format, with the rest being in .mkv format. Looks like I’ll be sticking with American shows then. I suppose it’s just as well.
As for video on a 30GB model, we were pretty disappointed with the 2 hours, 31 minutes we got playing back an iTunes TV show. You should expect a video-only battery life of about 4 hours on the 60GB version; the extra battery life makes the 60GB version a coveted item, particularly because it’s still slimmer than the 4G iPod. However, battery life will always be an issue with a video device.
I may also try converting the videos into another format, and hope for better results.
The new iPod supports H.264 and MPEG-4 video in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov formats, which means your iPod will play the videos offered by the iTunes Music Store and those hand-wrought videos you’ve properly encoded. Apple’s QuickTime Pro 7.0.3 (or an application such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro that takes advantage of QuickTime’s encoders) provides the best chance for success in this regard. Within QuickTime Pro’s Export dialog box you’ll find a Movie to iPod (320×240) option that exports videos in the H.264 .m4v file format compatible with the new iPods.
The next challenge will be ripping tons of CDs and uploading my music to the iPod. This will probably take a rather long time at first. I read that the iPod can play .mp3, so that should at least cut down on some of the prep time, as I won’t need to convert any files to a new format.
By Chris, 8/21/2006 @ 11:47 am
I’ve never tried but I’ve read ffmpeg can encode videos into .mp4 containers. mencoder supports only .avi as container as far as I know.
By Ender, 8/21/2006 @ 1:15 pm
Wow, your parents must have really missed you! I take it they are not mad about the whole Bunky thing anymore?
By Kabitzin, 8/21/2006 @ 6:57 pm
Well I didn’t see any attached iC4, so I guess so. Encoding these videos takes freaking forever T__T.
By Velius, 8/22/2006 @ 4:36 pm
LOL, iC4. You never know, since it’s button activated, they can just wait for the opportune moment to click that BIG red button.