iTunes will accept a number of different video codecs and there are also quite a few that it will not take. The video codecs that are not accepted tend to be from the Windows universe such as the .avi and the .wmv file types The easiest way to add a movie to iTunes is to do the drag-and-drop from your finder. Just have iTunes in one half of your desktop available to drop into and in the other half have your Finder. In iTunes if you have the movies tab open you can drop the file directly into your collection of movies. If you don’t have your movies section open in your library then you can drop the file into the area in the left hand column into the list underneath the word Library. Just the same as if you were bringing in some music and the music gets put into your music collection, the movie file is put into the correct place with the rest of your movies. It is as simple as that with your files that are .mov or .m4v type of files, but what do you do with one of those weird Windows movie codecs. Don’t worry, you will find a free way to convert video to iPad or iPod.

How to add videos to iTunes that are .AVI

What you have to do is to convert those movies to a format that is acceptable for iTunes. Basically this will mean that the file will have to be converted to H.264 and if you want to have your movie also put onto your iPod, then you may need to make sure it is of a certain pixel size and also may need to take care of the audio. There are a large number of applications or programs available for use on all platforms, be that Windows, Linux or Mac and the level of complexity for use of these applications varies considerably.

Using Handbrake to add movies to iTunes and your iPod

Handbrake is a powerful video converter which has the ability to convert many different video formats into the video formats that you require for iTunes. When you open the application, it goes to the open file menu to bring in a file for you to convert with Handbrake. Then you have the application ready to fiddle with the settings to get exactly what you need. If you know what you’re doing, you can make changes to get very specific configurations of your video file. Fortunately if you don’t really know what you’re doing you can just click on the button in the top right of the icon bar, which will toggle Handbrake presets and just choose from the list of Apple codecs available. In there, apart from iPod, iPhone iPad and Apple TV you also have a conversion called Universal which should cover most things.

How to add movies to iPod – A balance between quality and file size

Although it depends upon how large your iPod is in terms of storage size, you will probably need to keep the file size down if you possibly can. Also if your movie is going to be sent to an iPod, then the dimensions of the output don’t need to be too high. So you will be able to crunch the video file significantly and still have a good image for viewing.

One possibility is to choose one of the presets and then do some small tweaks to get the file just exactly as you require. For example you might decide to alter the target size of the finished file or you might choose to alter the frame rate to suit the actual video. Generally you will want to keep the frame rate the same as the source, but if you are watching a screencast then you could get away with reducing the frame rate to perhaps 12 or 15 frames per second.

Within Handbrake if you wish, you can put a tick in the checkbox for having the file web optimised. The best thing to do is to try using the presets first of all and see how that works out and you may not need to make any changes. If you have any questions about the best settings for a specific device why not send me an e-mail and I will be happy to help you work out the best way to convert your movie file.

There are other video converters available, one that I like to use is called Miro Video Converter. It is much simpler in operation, it is faster, but you have less opportunity to change settings and mess things up. Or you could use AirVideo iPad and not do any converting.