Q: I have a new iPod nano (video), and I’m trying to get a movie to play on it. I downloaded the movie from the iTunes Store, and it shows up in the “Movies” category in iTunes. However, it’s not syncing into my iPod. I tried finding it in the “add file to library” category, but it wasn’t listed. What can I do?
– Emily
A: Even though you may be synchronizing your music content to your iPod automatically, the settings for Movies and TV Shows are controlled separately, so you may want to double-check the synchronization settings for your iPod within iTunes to ensure that this new movie is included.
To do this, connect your iPod to your computer, and then select it from the Devices list on the left-hand side of the iTunes window. You should see an iPod Summary screen in the main window, and a series of tabs at the top. Select the “Movies’ tab and you will see the settings for which movies are being synchronized to your iPod:
Ensure that the “Sync Movies” box is selected, and that your synchronization settings include the movie that you would like on your iPod—either All Movies, unwatched movies, or specific movies. Note that if your selection is “Unwatched Movies” then only those movies that you have not already watched will be transferred to your iPod.
Also ensure that “Sync only checked items” is not selected on the main iPod “Summary” tab, or if it is selected, that the movie in question has a checkmark in the box which appears beside it in your iTunes library.
If these settings are correct, and the movie is still not synchronizing to your iPod, you should also check to ensure that your computer is authorized to play the movie. Normally if you simply try to play it, iTunes should prompt you for your iTunes Store user name and password and then take care of the necessary authorization for you, but you can also force this manually by selecting Store, Authorize Computer from your iTunes menu.
iTunes will normally inform you if there is a problem transferring content to your iPod, but you may have also suppressed these warnings in the past. A useful troubleshooting step can be to reset all warnings for your iPod by right-clicking on it in the iTunes Source list and choosing “Reset Warnings” from the context menu:
Once you have done this, try re-syncing your iPod and see if any warnings come up explaining why the movie will not transfer from your iTunes library onto your iPod. If the warning involves “authorization” then the steps to authorize your computer explained above should generally fix this.