ipod: videos and podcasts
 

hi, this is my first post and i'm aware that this has been brought up, so i'm sorry if this is redundant. i have a 30gb 5th generation video ipod. i'm running a kubuntu linux and windows xp dual boot system. when i connect my ipod in linux, i can manage songs just fine with gtkpod or amarok. i often use my ipod for videos and podcasts. for this i switch back to windows to use itunes to search for podcasts, manage videos and manage podcasts. i also use cucusoft dvd to ipod and videora ipod converter to convert videos to mp4. my goal is to be able to do all of this within linux using as few programs as possible. any suggestions?

You can also use gtkpod to load movies and other stuff into your ipod. Just select the files and if it is recognized, it will be loaded.

ipod: videos and podcasts
 

Hi, I also have a 30Gb 5G and had the same questions.
For converting, I use ffmpeg. I came across a little script, and I can't find the site to give the proper credit--anyway, it's the video2ipod guys.

#!/bin/bash
#Description: video2ipod converts video to iPod format
#Usage: v2i origin.avi output (it will add .mp4 by itself) (The origin can be avi, mpg, mov...)
#cp /home/_your name_/path_to/v2i /usr/local/bin/v2i
#chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/v2i
#4:3 aspect uses
#320x240, 480x360
#16:9 aspect uses
#320x180, 480×270
ffmpeg -i "$1" -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000 -b 700 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ar 44100 -ab 192 -s 480×270 -aspect 16:9 $2.mp4

Paste this into a text file without a suffix, I called it v2i because it's short and not already used by linux.
The comments #cp... and #chmod... are the commands to use to get it to be a command.
From there, you can follow the usage instructions the video2ipod guys provided.

Just modify the -aspect and -s values in your /home/_your name_/path_to/v2i file as needed (I added some comments with the values that work for me for TV out from iPod--then redo the cp.. and chmod.. bit to update your command file). It's pretty fast, comparable to Jodix's converter and the one that starts with V--Videora or something. I get error messages sometimes during conversion that do nothing harmful, but sometimes I use ugly source. There seems to be a correlation. It doesn't stop the conversion, though some frames might be skipped--I haven't noticed. A full length movie takes me about 45minutes, but that can probably be tweaked with quality settings depending on your output needs. For that, I have to defer to FFMPEG's wiki page.

For the transfer, I use gtkpod.

The results are decent, depends on the source. There's usually some blocky pixels when you go out to TV; in dimly lit scenes or where there's an expanse of a pattern, but hardly noticeable on the iPod's screen.

...and this site seems more informative than my post, sorry for putting it at the end-just found it:
http://www.smorgasbord.net/convert_video_linux

Have a look at http://thinliquidfilm.org. It's a new gui to batch convert and upload videos to a 5g ipod. It's a nice little app.