Must Have Ipod Video Gear

Ok so I just retired the Creative Zen and upgraded to the 60GB Video IPOD. What accessory/ies are a must have(if any)?

Also, any cool hacks for the video IPOD that I should know about?

Thanks all,
Flavio

You need a case for it. Not the one it comes with it, but a new case. The included case really sucks. New cases for the 60gb are very hard to come by, at least they where when I was looking for them. I would try amazon. I think that Toughskin makes osme ncie ones.

yea, it's only in the last week that I've seen any cases to fit the video ipods appear at local retailers at all! And i'm not sure I really like any of them anyway. There is no way I'm paying for a leather case for the thing...

I put a square of write-right over the screen portion and just let the rest get scratched

For a carry case I got myself one of these from CountyComm
http://www.countycomm.com/carrycase.htm

it's not the thinnest case available and there are several layers of the cloth in the back for the various belt flaps, but it fits great over my belt when I need to carry the thing that way. I'm happy with it and have yet to see any other case that I like better.

Then you'll definitely want the video output cable so that you can play the video on a TV. Compressed to larger mpeg4 instead of h264 you can actually watch it on a regular TV and the quality can be excellent. When we go on vacation now or visit the relatives I dont bring a stack of kids DVD's I just bring the iPod and the cable and an extra recharging plug.

definitely get a plastic case. You can't unscratch the ipod, but the case is replaceable.

I bought an Altec Lansing portable stereo dock for 60$ from Amazon. It is the size of a hardback book and sounds awesome. With AC it charges the Ipod. So If you don't have a charger, it's a good substitute.

I'm not sure I have 60 gigs of music I want to carry around.. Yet.

This and this converts video to use on an ipod. Nero recode works great as well as quicktime pro. Here is a good place to start.

you dont mention if you connect it to a Mac or a Windows box, tiktok has already linked to the windows tools, on the Mac the hands down winner for ripping DVD's to it is called Handbrake. For movies you already have in the machine you can use quicktime pro, or one of the various batch processing tools like QTAmature which I also like. Searching at versiontracker.com or macupdate.com will turn those up.

For encoding square content (like from the TV) h.264 is the best codec for the bit rate. But use 2 pass encoding, it takes double the time to encode but you'll be happy you did when you see how much better the video quality is. It makes a huge difference. For non-square or DVD rips I recommend using mpeg-4 encoding. the iPod says it can play up to 480x480, but it seems that is more a total pixels thing than an actual size thing, you can encode to letterbox'ish formats just by keeping the number of pixels the same, ie, expand in one direction but shrink in the other. For everything I've done 1mbps is plenty for really excellent quality video, even when played back on a regular TV. Some of the DVD rips I did for my daughter on this last vacation to grandmas we played back on their big screen TV and I couldn't find a single compression artifact. Really nice!

Wow! Thanks for all the great info. I was able to find this to prevent scratches...

http://www.shieldzone.com/category/ipods/

and for a case:

http://www.chums.com/?plid=24&pfid=114&psid=418&ipod=video

Thanks and keepem coming!

Regards,
Flavio

There are lot's of great accessories.

So far- between us- my wife and I have bought:

Waterproof Otter Box Indestructable- but heavy. And iPod needs to be remove from case to dock or use many accessories. Controls work surprisingly well.

iSkin Cases Silicone case with full face, scratch resistant clear shield. If you're only going to get one case- this is the one.

Shure e2c earphones - While the included earphones sound pretty good- I found them hard and uncomfortable. I also found myself cranking up the volume when there was a lot of background noise. You can spend a lot more, but these work great for me.

We bought the Road Trip for her car, because she doesn't have a cassette player. It works well, but you need to take the iPod out of the case to use it. Also hard to find a clear station in the Metro area- but that's true with all FM Transmitters. At least this one lets you use the entire FM band.

I use a cassette adapter and 12v power supply in my car. (Someday love to get a direct connection...)

Let's see, we have a Moster "Y" adapter so we can share one iPod and a travel AC adapter. Next need to buy a dock, so we can plug into the home stereo.

I've been using DVDcrypter to rip, and Videora to convert a few DVD's, and that works well- and free! Also bought the software Anapod- but haven't had a chance to figure it out/use it yet.

Another thing you may want (and I need to also...) is another hard drive to BACK-UP all your music files (I've got over 50 GB so far- just from ripping my CD's) and that took a few weeks of steady ripping. I'd hate to have to re-do that if I lost a drive...

Anyway, enjoy you're new toy. It's become part of my EDC


OH! I almost forgot. There's a great site- iLounge.com that has forums, news, and reviews about iPods (guess they have a forum about just about anything these days . I did quite a bit of "research" over there...

Here's something. Many of these Ipods and the like are expensive all by themselves, and I guess you can usually get an extended warratnty for the hardware, but what about all the music, movies, pictures, etc.? That has to be up there in cost as well, especially with the units with large hard drives. What about insurance to replace the unit and possibly contents if it is destroyed or stolen? Not exactly "gear", but something to think about, if it's even possible to insure Ipods and thier contents.

Hi James,

Don't forget Mac The Ripper.