For those of you with your fancy little video iPod you might have discovered that getting video on there isn't the easiest. iPod's only support one format of video which is the .mp4 or .mov formats. These are the quicktime ones.

When I first purchased my iPod, I wanted to put a few of my videos on there but it didn't work. You need to either download them in the right format in the first place or convert your existing ones.

Note: Your iPod can play any of these .mp4's or .mov's, but they don't have to be high resolution since the screen is so small. It is in your advantage to have the iPod format ones since you will be able to fit a lot more of them onto your iPod as well. The only downside is they don't look as good on your PC, so you would have to download them special just for the iPod or convert them. Also, if you have the Audio/Video cable for your iPod, you can play them on a television monitor. If they are low quality they will look bad on there too.

Downloading in MP4 Format

This can be done through all of Apple's "you purchase" applications like iTunes. This is really the simplest, but has the least amount of selection. Just download and synch it to your iPod.

If you are looking for movie trailers, these are almost always in Quicktime on the movie's main website. Youl will almost always see the option to download the iPod versions as well (it will be quite a bit smaller since it doesn't have to be as high a resolution on the small screen to look good).

Bittorrent and the file sharing networks are a good, but illegal source as well. A lot of people will share their mp4's on there so if you know you want to watch it on your iPod, you might as well just download the mp4 or mov format. Some sites will also have the iPod format resolution ones as well. Smaller file sizes and everything.

If you can get an account on BitMeTv, they have an awesome selection of iPod formatted videos. You can pull whole seasons of Family Guy, Simpsons, CSI, Lost, etc. Try out Mininova as well, they havea few.

Converting Existing Videos

This can be done with a variety of video conversion programs. They almost all charge a small license fee. Just google it to find one you like. I personally use WinAvi and I have tried Cucusoft's. I believe the professional version of Quicktime can do the conversion for you as well.

You basically take the mpeg, divx, avi, wmv, or whatever other video format you have and use this program to convert it. They usually have a default setting for converting to iPod, PSP, or other devices so it is pretty simple.

If you find a good free program, let me know. I haven't found one I liked yet.

Note: Converting video takes time. Depending on the speed of your computer, it can take the same amount of time it takes to watch it as it does to convert it to mp4. I own 4 year old Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM and my computer converts about 45 frames per second and the video itself is about 30 frames per second so a 23 minute Simpsons episode can take around 15 minutes to encode.

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For those of you who don't know what a NDS is. It is a Nintendo DS, there latest version of a Gameboy. I got one at x-mas. I know, I know, I am a little old for that, but I don't care.

Anyhow, I have a supercard and supercard lite bundle so that I can play homebrew games on it. I have found some awesome ones, including Warcraft Tower Defense. There are some excellent applications as well, like DSOrganize.

I want to write my own application. I don't know what it will be yet, but I got set up last night. There is a an excellent tutorial I found that describes how to set things up. There is a 15 day tutorial with most days completely documented, but still room for some improvements.

Last night, I did Day 1. It took me about half and hour and I installed Visual C++ Express 2005, devkitPro, and palib. I created a new project for my NDS, compiled it, and ran it inside the DeSmuMe emulator to test it.

Necessary Files

If you want to set up for yourself, follow the instructions there. There are a few little intricacies and environment variables you need to know about. I couldn't possibly document better than they have there either. You will need to download the following applications though. Don't install them until you have read the instructions on Day 1.

• devkitPro Updater
• .NET Framework 2.0 (if you don't already have it)
• PALib Installer

And if you really want to use Visual C++ Express 2005, download these two.

• Visual C++ Express 2005
• PALib App Wizard

Going Forward

Further on in the tutorial there are basic instructions on the C programming language and features of the Nintendo DS. I have done a lot of C programming in the past so I'm sure I will be fine. Learning the limitations of the hardware will be the big learning curve I think. To do a game requires understanding of sprites and other techniques I have never done, so it should be interesting.

I will document whatever project I start and what I learned along the way. Will post some source code too.

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What happened to my traffic. I had a nice surge after my ezine article submissions, but now I've faded off again.

I was reading some "how to get traffic" articles yesterday and there is one thing I am definitely not doing that is recommended. That is "Getting Involved". One blog even said you should only write articles two days of the week and should be reading and commenting on other blogs the rest of the week.

Good advice. I would probably learn more as well. So that is my next goal. I enjoy a few blogs already. I will start subscribing to RSS for my favuorite ones and start to post some useful comments (not just commenting because I can).

The blogs I spend the most time on now are John Chow, ProBlogger, and Kumiko's Cash Quest.

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