It does not matter whether you have owned an iPod for ages or just bought a video iPod for iPod video downloads, there is something new you can learn about your digital portable device. To download video onto your iPod is not as easy as ABC if this is the first time you are using an iPod. Even for the experienced iPod junkies, you may also experience some difficulties when downloading iPod video or trying to put those iPod video downloads onto your MP3 player.

You may not know but for your information, your iPod MP3 player can support two video formats for iPod video downloads, MPEG-4 video and H.264 video. Since these two formats are compatible with your iPod, people often ask a common question. Which of the two should they use then? In terms of picture quality and space usage, H.264 iPod video downloads is apparently the winner over MPEG-4 video. But it does not mean that MPEG-4 is inferior or no good in these two aspects. What this indicates is basically, you can download and save more music videos and videos onto your iPod in H.264 format than MPEG-4.

Yet there are some who also disagree that H.264 is better in picture quality. Experts can even tell you that encoding at higher video settings would produce videos of equal quality be it H.264 or MPEG-4 video format.

Since this is the case, it is very likely that everyone would go for H.264 video format for their iPod video downloads. But one thing that users realize is that the encoding of video using H.264 video format is extremely slow. The wait can be so painful that people simply give up halfway and switch to iPod video downloads in MPEG-4 format. It is really your choice on which format to use for your iPod video downloads when weighing the factors such as time needed, quality, disk space usage and whether you have the patience to wait.

Other than the video formats for iPod video downloads, we have to also check if the video files we are downloading from online sources are in MPEG, AVI, or other formats. Most of the time, online music stores would provide video downloads in these versions so as to be compatible with other MP3 players. In such instances, you would need to convert the video files before your iPod can actually interpret the data. If you are tight in your budget, try using a free video convertor called Videora iPod Converter. Together with Videora, you can start to rip video content from DVDs and copy them onto your iPod to watch.

When you are downloading video for iPods at the iPod video downloads websites, it is good to read the terms and conditions for the iPod video downloads. As a precautionary measure, avoid free iPod video sites. These sites are notorious for installing malware onto your computers when downloading iPod video. Instead of using these free sites, go for those paid sites with a life-time membership or yearly membership. The downloading is safe and neat and iPod video downloads come in huge selection.

Of course, the first choice of many iPod users would be iTunes. With such huge disk capacities in the latest line of Video iPods, you can pack many iPod videos. But it can be quite costly to download so many videos from iTunes. This is where the paid membership sites can offer a great bargain. These download sites carry millions of iPod media files including iPod video downloads. For a one-time fee, you can help yourself to as many videos for your iPod as you wish. Since there are dozens of such download sites, be sure to scout around and find one that suits your needs. Find out more from my iPod video blog about where you can access tons of iPod video downloads for your iPod.

The content of this article is provided for the purpose of education and illustration only and is in no way associated with Apple, iTune, or any company or subsidiary of Apple. This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author's name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.