iLounge

Q: What are the best speakers to use with my iPod? (15, 76-79, and 90-92)

Q: What are the best headphones to use with my iPod? (10, 72-75, and 90-92)

Q: I really want to get a nice case for my iPod. Do you have any suggestions? (36-37, 54-67, and 90-92)

Q: How can I connect my iPod to my car stereo? (14, 32-35, 68-71, and 90-92)

Q: Are there any batteries that I can use to extend my iPod's battery life? (82-83 and 90-92)

A: Answers to these and many other questions can be found in two places. Our Free iPod Book 3.3 provides a complete report card to all of the iPod accessories we've reviewed as of summer 2007, as well as over 125 iTunes and iPod tips & tricks. Further, our new 2008 iPod & iPhone Buyers' Guide has accessory tutorials at the page numbers listed in parentheses above. These and other publications in our Library are free downloads, developed by the editors of iLounge!

Q: With the new iTunes WiFi Store on the iPhone, what happens when I purchase an album that has videos or digital booklets?  Can I view these on the iPhone?  Can I choose to download the videos later, as I imagine they’d be quite large and take extra time to download?  What if my download is interrupted?  Do I risk losing my purchased music if I have a bad WiFi connection, or can I pause and restart the download later?

- Eric

A: The iTunes WiFi Store is a nice new addition to the iPhone and iPod touch products, however at this point it only supports music purchases, and not other content such as videos or podcasts.

Any music you purchase while using the iTunes WiFi Store will be downloaded to your iPhone or iPod touch, and then transferred back to your iTunes library during your next synchronization, in much the same way as the “Transfer Purchases” option presently works with the other iPod models. This happens automatically when you connect to iTunes, and as an added bonus, any purchased tracks are added to a distinct “Purchased” playlist within your iTunes library:

Since the iTunes WiFi Music Store only supports music purchases, videos are not available directly in any form. If you happen to purchase an album that includes video content or digital booklets, the iTunes Store will inform you of this on the album screen, indicating that these items will be downloaded directly to your iTunes library on your computer the next time you connect to the iTunes Store:

Further, any items that are not successfully downloaded to your iPhone or iPod touch directly (due to failed or interrupted downloads) will remain in your purchase queue and be downloaded directly into iTunes the next time you connect from your computer. You can initiate this process manually on your computer by selecting Store, Check for Purchases from within iTunes.

Once they’ve been downloaded by your computer, you can of course transfer any of these included video files from iTunes to your iPhone or iPod touch as you normally would. Digital Booklets are not supported on the iPhone or iPod, and will be stored only in your iTunes library.

Note that any content purchased on your iPhone or iPod touch and downloaded from the iTunes Store by your computer rather than your iPhone/iPod touch will be placed in the “Purchased” playlist, as opposed to the “Purchased on...” playlist.

Q: I know this may sound sad to all of those in the know about iPods but this is my first. I have come to grips with transferring music files and playing them back but what I am still have problems with converting music videos. I can get the video film but there is no sound - I have gone through the whole conversion process but continue to have the same problem.

- Gail

Q: I have recently bought a 30 GB video iPod but when I sync videos to it they do not play sound only visual. I have converted file to iPod via the advanced menu in iTunes and the videos play fine in iTunes although the visual of the video opens in a separate iTunes window, can you help me?

- Jack

A: The most common cause of this particular problem is the way in which QuickTime handles multiplexed (or “muxed") MPEG video files. When converting a video file using QuickTime that has both the audio and video tracks “multiplexed” into a single track, QuickTime is unable to convert the audio track properly, and the result is no sound. Since iTunes uses the QuickTime engine to perform video conversion operations, any MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files that you feed into iTunes that happen to be “muxed” will result in this issue.

More specific information can be found in Apple’s Knowledge base, in the document titled, iPod plays video but not audio of some exported files.

The simplest solution to this is to use a different video conversion application for these files. In fact, since QuickTime’s performance is extremely slow compared to many of the other solutions available, there would certainly be a benefit to using a third-party conversion tool for all of your video conversion requirements.

Although there are a myriad of options out there, two popular tools for this purpose are Videora for Windows users, and iSquint for Mac users. You can find a more comprehensive description of the various tools and options available in our tutorial series on converting videos for the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV:

Q: I’ve just treated myself to a 160 GB iPod classic. It has more storage space than my 120 GB hard drive but I thought you can never have too much space. My plan was to automatically sync with my music library and downloaded podcasts which I have more than enough room for. However, I’d like to add video manually so I can remove the original files from iTunes to save space on my hard drive. Is this possible?

- Dan

A: Unfortunately, when it comes to manual management of an iPod’s content, the options are to either manually manage all music and video content, or automatically synchronize everything. The only exceptions to manual management are Podcasts, Photos, Contacts/Calendars and Games, which are always synced automatically, regardless of the “manual” setting.

Therefore, there is no way to manually manage video content without manually managing your music content as well. That having been said, however, if the goal is to simply save space on your local hard drive in regards to video content, there is a workaround which may be acceptable.

iTunes will never remove anything from your iPod as long as it remains listed in your iTunes library, regardless of whether the original file exists or not. In this way, music libraries on external hard drives can be supported without risking your iPod being wiped out if the external hard drive is not connected.

Based on this, the simplest solution to save space on your local computer is to simply delete the underlying file once you’ve transferred it to your iPod, leaving the entry in the iTunes library in place. You will get a warning that iTunes cannot locate the video file whenever you access it in your iTunes library, but this can safely be ignored, and the content will never actually be removed from the iPod unless you DEselect it from synchronization or remove the entry from your iTunes library.

You can quickly locate the underlying file for any given iTunes library item by right-clicking on the item in question, and choosing “Show in Finder” (Mac) or “Show in Windows Explorer” (Windows). This will open a Finder/Explorer window with the relevant file highlighted. You could then just delete the file directly from that location to save disk space.

Obviously, if you’re going to delete the underlying file, you won’t be able to RE-transfer that item back to your iPod without putting the file back onto your computer, so you’ll want to either maintain a backup of your video files somewhere else, or be very careful about DE-selecting specific items for synchronization. In principle, this is no different from the way things would work in manual mode, however.

Q: I just bought a iPod classic 80 GB and I converted some Family Guy episodes. I was wondering how do I put the episode into a video category or a TV category instead of them always showing up in my movies category. I was also wondering how I could group the episodes into each season, just to keep the iPod menu nice and organzied.

- Anonymous

A: Most of the video options can be set for a given track directly in iTunes by selecting the video track, choosing File, Get Info and selecting the Video tab:

From this tab, you can change the category to “TV Show” and fill in information on the Show/series name (ie, “Family Guy"), as well as season number, and episode ID and episode number information. iTunes will then re-categorize the videos as TV Shows, and they will show up in the appropriate location in iTunes and on the iPod.

Once you have categorized items as TV Shows, you will also want to check your iTunes sync settings for your iPod, to ensure that you are transferring the TV Shows and episodes that you wish to have on your iPod.

It should be noted that iTunes defaults to only transferring unwatched TV shows, based on play count, so anything you’ve already watched will not be transferred to your iPod unless you change this setting. Further, with this setting, shows you watch on your iPod will be automatically removed during the next synchronization with iTunes.

Another important limitation of iTunes 7 is that there is presently no way to change the video settings for multiple items at once—it is a track-by-track process at this point. There are third-party tools that can assist with this process if you have a lot of episodes to tag.

For more information on tagging and organizing video content in iTunes, check out our tutorial, The Complete Guide to Managing iTunes Videos.

Q: How do you change information like the name that you give the iPod? I bought one for my husband that was supposed to be new, but when I plugged it into the computer for the first time to download songs it had “Jeremy’s iPod” as the name. My husband’s name is Jason and he hasn’t touched it.

- Charlotte

A: Actually, this is fairly simple, although not necessarily intuitive:  Simply connect the iPod to your computer, and double-click on the name of the iPod where it appears in the iTunes source list on the left-hand side of the screen:

The name will change to an editable field, and you can type in any name you wish and then click the mouse button elsewhere on the screen or simply hit the return key.

Note that another option is to perform a full “Restore” of the iPod from within iTunes, which will return the iPod to factory settings, erasing everything on it. This will result in an iPod that is in the same state as a new one that you just took out of the box. The “iPod Setup Wizard” will then run, prompting you to name your iPod and select a few setup options such as manual or automatic management of content. To perform a restore, simply click the “Restore” button that appears in iTunes when connecting the iPod to your computer. This is a good way to ensure that your used iPod is completely refreshed back to its default settings, but is not strictly necessary if all you want to do is change the name and are otherwise happy with the setup.

Q: Some web sites require Flash Player version 9 to view videos. Is there a way to install this app on my iPhone? If not, how do I get around this?

- Anonymous

A: Unfortunately, no. As of yet, there is NO flash support on either the iPhone or the iPod touch, nor are there any workarounds. Although there are some sites that require flash to be rendered properly, most sites also have an HTML-compliant version for non-Flash users.

For video playback purposes, the iPhone and iPod touch will render YouTube links properly in most cases by simply transferring the user to the built-in YouTube application. Further, video playback is supported directly in the browser if the content is in a QuickTime-compliant format. A good example of this is Apple’s QuickTime Movie Trailers site, which works very nicely on the iPhone and iPod touch over WiFi, and even has an iPhone-friendly interface provided for it.

Q: I accidently added two different artwork images to one track in my iTunes library and now I am trying to delete one of the images and keep the other. Can you please tell me how this is done as it is really bugging me. Thanks for your time and help!

- Jason

A: Although multiple artwork images are not really used anywhere in iTunes or on the iPod itself, they can be viewed from the “Artwork” tab in the properties for a given track. To see this, simply select the track in question, and choose File, Get Info, and then select the “Artwork” tab:

From here, you will see all artwork images assigned to that particular track, and can simply remove the ones you do not want by selecting them and choosing the “Delete” button.

Unfortunately, there is no way to change this for multiple tracks at once, although selecting multiple tracks and re-adding the album artwork by pasting it into the “Artwork” box in the Get Info dialog will replace any existing artwork in those tracks:

Pasting into the artwork pane in the main iTunes window, on the other hand, will add that artwork as an additional image for each track.

Q: I am a youth minister who likes to keep my students and parents informed by sending text messages with my cell phone. I just purchased an iPhone and was wondering if the iPhone allows you to send multiple text messages to groups?

- Michael

A: Unfortunately, the iPhone does not presently support the sending of SMS messages to multiple recipients. SMS messaging on the iPhone is treated as an iChat-style conversation between two parties.

There are third-party applications that can be added to a hacked iPhone, but of course these are not in any way supported by Apple, and you proceed at your own risk in terms of adding such third-party applications.

You can send feature requests to Apple in regards to the iPhone at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html.

Note that although this isn’t supported directly in the iPhone’s SMS application, there are several possible workarounds depending on your cellular provider and how they handle either web-based SMS or e-mail to SMS messages. Since the iPhone has a full browser and full e-mail capabilities, using a web-to-SMS or email-to-SMS gateway may offer a viable alternative. Often SMS messages can be sent to specific phones simply by using an e-mail address such as:

9025551212@txt.att.net

(for an AT&T subscriber)

Most cellular carriers have this information readily available on their websites. For example, see How do I e-mail a text message to an AT&T wireless phone? for an example of how this works on AT&T.

A list of e-mail-to-SMS domains for various providers has also been started in our Discussion Forums at How to Send MMS from the iPhone.

Finally, it may be worth checking to see if your mail hosting provider offers an SMS gateway service as well. Some providers such as Fastmail (http://www.fastmail.fm) do offer a direct e-mail-to-SMS gateway within their OWN environment for their customers. Other providers may offer similar options. These methods have the benefit of being carrier-neutral, since you submit the SMS message to your own e-mail provider’s domain, and they take care of the details of delivering the message to the recipient, regardless of which carrier they’re on.

Q: I am currently studying and living over in the UK and my parents want to send me a new iPod nano as a Christmas present. I don’t know if it would work over here (in the UK) if it is a US iPod though. I know that iTunes has a UK and a US store, so I don’t know if I could get songs from the UK iTunes to go onto the US iPod if I got one. Also, I didn’t know if there would be other compatibility issues (electrical connections, etc.). I am hopeless when it comes to the different region issues with technology. Any guidance you can give would be very appreciated! Thank you so much for your time and effort.

- Jamie

A: With regards to iTunes Store content, there are NO compatibility issues with different countries on the specific model of iPod. As long as you have a valid iTunes Store account for the country that you are using the iTunes Store from, any content can be stored on any iPod.

In reality, there are no hardware or firmware differences between U.S. and U.K. iPod models, with the possible exception of the volume cap that was placed on some European models.

The only real possible concern is the compatibility of charging/power accessories. However, since the iPod nano does not ship with a power adapter in the box, your only charging option is via your computer’s USB port, which is what many people use anyway. This would have no compatibility issues, since it’s your computer that is providing the power.

Alternatively, there should be numerous local stores that you could pick up an iPod charging accessory, and these simply connect to the Dock Connector on the iPod in the same way the USB cable does (some in fact even use the same USB cable), and are therefore compatible with any model of iPod.

Q: I am considering buying an iPod touch, but am hesitating between the 8GB and 16GB models. I have about 6GB of music that I would like to carry on my iPod, plus some photos. To help me decide if 8GB would be enough, it would help to know how much space is required to store a photo on the iPod touch. Is the original jpeg file transferred to the iPod, or an “optimized”, reduced in size version? If it is a reduced version, what size is a typical photo? How much storage would be required to hold 1000 photos?

- Pascal

A: In much the same way as photo transfer has always worked on the other iPod models, iTunes reduces/optimizes the photo size when transferring it to the iPod touch (and the iPhone). This is to make the best use of available storage, as well as to offload some of the photo processing from the device itself, since it only needs to display a pre-optimized version of the photo.

The iPhone and iPod touch actually store four resolutions of each photo:  Two for the different thumbnail views, one pre-resized for sending out via e-mail, and one in the maximum 640x480 resolution for viewing on the iPod touch or via the TV output. Despite the fact that the iPod touch screen is only 320x480, the zoom and TV output features make it necessary to store a higher-resolution version of the image.

The bottom line of all of this is that each image stored on your iPod will take approximately 676,192 bytes, or 660 KB, regardless of the size of the original photo (lower-resolution photos are still scaled up to these sizes).

Unlike the fifth-generation iPod or iPod classic, the iPod touch does not have a “Disk Mode” and there is therefore no option to store full resolution photos (as they cannot be manually retrieved from the device).

For more information, you may want to take a look at our forum thread, Photo Storage on the iPod and iPhone - The Gory Details, which has recently been updated for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Ask iLounge Archives:

5-9-08: About iPod battery life and charging, Using Apple FM Radio remote on older iPod models, Scan and Fix dialog using iPod on Windows Vista, Preserving iTunes metadata when reinstalling Windows, Importing multiple tracks into iTunes, About iTunes and ID3 tags

5-2-08: Transferring digital camera movies to iPod, Reordering and shuffling playlists, Transferring playlists between iTunes libraries, Importing audiobooks, Correcting tags on CD import, Burning CDs with longer gaps

4-25-08: Finding Duplicates in iTunes, Setting files to open in iTunes automatically, Resetting authorizations, 1G iPod nano and voice recording, Syncing a library larger than your iPod capacity, Grouping multi-disc albums

4-17-08: Ripping CDs to external hard drive, Zeppelin speakers and USB port, Bluetooth stereo on iPhone, Converting TV shows to iPod, Audio recording on iPod touch, Wireless security on iPod touch

4-10-08: Transferring LPs to iTunes, Movie Rentals and 5G iPod, New iPod models on older Macs, Maintaining Playback Position on iPod, Importing CDs on multiple computers

See the rest of the Archives...