Apple's iPod has transformed from a digital music player to a digital media player par excellence. Now in its fifth generation, the iPod brand covers devices that play music, display pictures of album covers, allow touch based interfaces, and even play your favorite movies and television programs, all available through the Apple Music Store. Beyond the commercial options, you can also download copies of your own video programming to your iPod through the iTunes music store.



This has a direct impact on something you see in the news - the Writer's Guild of America strike. The Writer's Guild (WGA) is on strike (shutting down production of a lot of television programs) because of discrepancies in the way that residuals are billed on digital content distributed through the Internet, including through Apple's iTunes online store.

For most television programs made after 1964, every time a repeat airs (on Nick at Night, or just as a re-run during the season), the company broadcasting it pays a small amount of money to the studio for the right to rebroadcast it, and a very small chunk (half a cent on the dollar) gets stashed away into a fund called the residual fund, where it's used to pay the writers who created that show or wrote that episode in the first place.

Similar deals exist for VHS tapes and DVDs, but not for broadcasting streaming content on the Internet, and for sale through the iTunes music store and other digital outlets. That residual money is what pays for WGA members health insurance plans, mortgages and the like, and the writers are justifiably concerned about this.

Video, when it's squashed down for digital presentation, uses an encryption/compression algorithm called a codec. There are several kinds of codecs out there, and the iPod will play a fair number of them. The most commonly used codec out there is called MP4 or MPEG4, and this is the native codec (with some tweaks) that the iPod uses. Make sure that whatever video converter you use gives you a preview function, so you can make sure that everything comes out well. Two "known good" converters are PQ DVD to iPod Video Converter, and ImTOO iPod Movie Converter.

One of the nice things about these two packages is that they also convert audio files to iPod supported MP3, AAC, M4A file formats, which is handy when you want to make sure the audio synchronizes properly with the video. The user interfaces allow you to select what formats you want things converted to, and where the converted file will be saved; at that point, you can drag and drop the music to your iPod through the playlist creator with ease.

But as legal issues over piracy and copyright laws are beginning to be strict, many are concerned about the future of iPod movies. Will the users be made liable for home videos or ripped DVDs downloaded on their iPod movies' play list?

Good software will give you a lot of options for the conversion process, and have a clean user interface. Two good candidates are PQ DVD to iPod Video Converter and ImTOO iPod Movie Converter. Both of these options have nice interfaces, allow you to dump video to MPEG 4 format, and synchronize the audio streams automatically.

Once the digital video stream has been converted, you just drag and drop the file to your iPod and it'll show up on the digital playlist, and you're good to go. Now, be sure that you're only doing this with DVDs you legally own, and be aware that there's a movement afoot to make DVD copying software illegal, or harder to use. People getting paid for their work is a touchy issue - don't be a pirate.

Creative issues aside, an iPod is a great way to share videos with your friends; you can show it to them on the little screen, or wirelessly connect to a digital media center, or just use the TV Out jack and wide screen options. Understand that digital video compression will make most of the videos come out a little darker than usual.

The licensing agreements made are there to keep everyone afloat - producing television shoes costs nearly two million dollars an episode for a lot of them, for example, so shooting an entire 22 episode season is 44 to 45 million dollars invested, and the investors want to see a return on their money.