Want to convert your videos so you could play them on your Ipod or Iphone? iPodMe is a handy little program that can do this for you. iPodME is built around a handful of pre-determined conversion "profiles" designed to make it easy for users to decide on what kind of conversion they want based on 3 parameters: the desired speed of conversion (slow/fast/turbo), and whether to optimize for video quality or for optimal video size. It also offers a "custom" profile for user who, like me, prefer to have more control over what the conversion parameters are.

Note: if you want a simple, short guide for how to make quick, good conversions with iPodMe see my "Recommended conversions" section below.

Here are seven eight reasons why this program is cool:

1. The way it deals with video resolution: when making your decision as to the resolution you prefer (640×480, 480×320, or 320×240), iPodMe will automatically resize to the closest resolution to the one you request while maintaining the original aspect ratio, without stretching or distorting or surrounding your video with black lines on top and bottom. If you actually want to stretch and resize your video you can check a box and the program can do that as well.
2. Encoders: you can choose from either x264 or Xvid. Both are built in; no need to worry about getting these installed on your system separately.
3. Three quality modes: you can either choose to (a) set average bitrate, (b) set a constant quality quantizer, or (c) set Output size, and let the program determine the bitrate. This third one is the most useful in my opinion and makes the program much more practical to use than other similar programs that do not have this option.
4. Batch conversions: are possible. Will use the same settings for all selected files, which can be useful if, say, you are converting a bunch of episodes from a TV series and want the same output parameters.
5. Portable: a single, self contained file, approx 4 megs. Unzip and run. Note that it requires MS .NET to run.
6. The user interface: simple, uncomplicated, straightforward. Doesn’t drown you in options and does not throw unexpected curveballs.
7. Can burn subtitles: use an .srt subtitle file with the exact same name as the video you are converting.
8. Open source: yes, you can download the source freely

Recommended conversions: here’s what I do to get excellent video conversions for my iPhone every time.

1. Resolution: set at 640×480. This is suitable for most recent Ipods/Iphones (5th gen+). If you have an older Ipod you may need to use 320×240. I like this resolution because it plays well on both the Ipod and the PC screens.
2. Profile: custom
3. Click the "More options" button and set the output folder where you want your converted files.
4. Encoder: x264
5. Profile: Best Quality. Might take slightly longer than the others, but usually I’m not concerned about that.
6. Mode: Output size. Tell it the size of your output file in megs. I usually set it somewhere close to the original or 700 megs to fit a single CD, if that is a concern.
7. Check "resample audio track", set Frequency at 48000
8. Set bitrate at 160 kbps (which is the max that can be used on an Ipod video).
9. Voila. You’re done.

The verdict: a terrific program that does the job brilliantly. What I like about this program is that I can recommend it to people who want to convert videos for their iPods/iPhones knowing that it supports 640×480 resolutions (some Ipod video converters don’t), not worrying about whether they will have the correct encoders installed on their machines, and knowing that they have the option to just set the output video size, instead of messing with bitrates and such.

Also, I have tested this with about a dozen or so conversions and found it to be very reliable. I highly recommend it!

Version Tested: 2.0

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista. Requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or newer. (This is already pre-installed in Vista).

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 3.9 megs).

If, say, you’re going to a conference, going to visit relatives, or for whatever reason will be in an unfamiliar part of town and wondering about the available options for wireless internet check out this neat service. Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder allows you to enter an address (e.g. a zip code) and gives you a list of Wi-Fi hotpots in that area. It will also place these venues on a Google map mashup.

Of course, this will only help you if you’re planning ahead, unless you have an internet-enabled mobile phone in which case you can log-on and get this information on the spot when you need it. I tried this with mine and although the Google maps service does not show inside the browser on my iPhone I was still able to get a list of Wi-Fi places.

I tested this service on the two locations which I know the most: my neighborhood where I live, and the downtown area where I work, and I can report that it was able to identify more than 95% of places (in both cases it missed only one place that I knew of, but revealed a number of others that I had not known about previously).

Of course what I really want to know is how this service get this information? I’m not sure what the answer to this question is, but I will report it’s database at the time of this writing includes 86 countries and a total of 17,124 hotspots, although 14,836 of these are US-based (approx 87%).

WiPod: also worth mentioning is this little service that uses the Ipod’s notes functionality to upload a database of Free Wifi locations for the state/country of your choosing onto your Ipod for perusal when you really need it the most.

Visit the Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder page.

AlbumArt.org

I’ve always used Amazon to download album art, which doesn’t provide large size images, and is on occasion unable to deliver artwork for some titles. My second resource is typically Google image search, which is unpredictable.

This is why I was very pleased to discover AlbumArt.org. It allows you to search for either CD or DVD artwork and instantly produces (mostly) large format results. It also contains album art from international and/or rare realeses. A search for "Radiohead" produced a staggering 468 results, which certainly says something about the breadth of this resource. And as the folks over at the CD Design and Album Cover Art blog indicate, in many cases the size of the images is larger than that provided by the album artwork resources in Itunes.

[Via the CD Design and Album Cover Art blog]

Go to AlbumArt.org.

This browser extension aims to condense what would typically involve 4 different steps into a single, simple right-click command. While normally you would need to (1) click to download an audio file, (2) select the location to save the file, (3) start ITunes, and (4) manually add the file to the Itunes Library, with Tunestor you would simply right-click on the mp3 download link in the browser and select “download directly to Itunes”.

What I like about this is the convenience of knowing that I can download something then find it in the music library when I open Itunes, ready to be synched with my Iphone.

Here are some notes on this program:

• Tunestor downloads files to the “My Music” directory by default. While this is probably a good choice, it would be better if it enabled you to change the default download directory in case the user prefers another location. Come to think of it, having the ability to optionally introduce a “save as” dialog to choose the save folder would also be good (albeit it would add a step).
• Tunestor is affiliated with TuneStory, a brand new free “social music discovery & download” site. On install it will ask you whether to enable sharing of your download links on TuneStory. It promises to be both secure and anonymous, but if you would rather this app not telegraph this information make sure to uncheck this in the install process. (I accepted to see what happens and sure enough my track that I downloaded to test this program with showed up on the Tunestory website, available for download in 2 clicks).
• Aside from the “download directly to Itunes” right click entry, Tunestor also installs a “Tunestory.com Hit List” context menu command. I’m not sure what that does exactly and wasn’t able to find info on it on the site; I thought it might send download link info to Tunestor but it did not seem to do that when I clicked it.

Version tested: 1.5

Compatibility: Windows 98/2000/Me/XP/2003 (no info on Vista); MS Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher / Firefox 1.5 or higher; iTunes 4.7 or higher.

Go to the Tunestor home page to download. .

ITunes Art Importer is a plugin for Itunes that downloads album art from Amazon.com and saves it within the music files ID3 tag. It adds an additional layer of user control over the process of finding album art beyond that provided by ITunes.

Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 0.9.2

While ITunes provides a fairly decent ability to mass-retrieve album artwork for a music library, it suffers from problems in that (a) ITunes will not retrieve album art for tracks that do not contain album info or are not tagged exactly the way it expects, and (b) ITunes requires the user to have an ITunes account and be logged in in order for the album art function to work (simple to set up but requires a valid credit card).

ITunes Art Importer can provide a very practical (and powerful) tool to get the album art for your music collection. It can be used to auto-import album art for an entire music collection (or part of one), but for those tracks for which auto importing will not succeed, ITunes Art Importer is versatile enough to be used effectively on a per-case basis to get album art imported for all of your tracks.

• Auto Importing: ITunes Art Importer can scan an entire library (or part of one) and automatically import the album art for tracks. When in doubt, it can be set to automatically use a ’best guess’, and can be instructed to either leave all tracks that already have images alone or re-process them. In my experience, auto-importing by best guess works brilliantly.
• User assisted album art downloading: for those tracks that auto importing doesn’t identify, you can manually override the automatic search by typing an alternative search string in the search box. This will typically generate a list of possible entries to visually browse through and work from, and is an extremely handy way to quickly take care of all those tracks in your library that don’t auto import their album art.
• The user interface (things I like): what’s worth mentioning here is that ITunes Art Importer is (a) very straightforward and easy to use, and (b) can quickly connect you to the Amazon web page of any of the musical selections simply by clicking on the displayed thumbnail, which is a very handy feature when, say, you want to go to the webpage to sure that your track is in that particular album.
• The user interface (things I didn’t like): the interface can be somewhat confusing when you are processing a lot of tracks simultaneously without auto-importing best guess, in that the user is asked to select the most appropriate artwork for a track, but once that happens the program strangely seems to save the artwork in all of the unidentified tracks indiscriminately. This has been my experience and I’m not sure if I might have been using the program incorrectly. (The solution for me was to simply set auto importing to best guess for processing the entire library, then go back to those it didn’t get on its own and fix them individually).

Wish list (or how this program can be even better):

• Requires ITunes: the option to run this app independently from Itunes would be nice.
• Album art sources: currently using Amazon.com, but it would be great if they included the option to retrieve info from the Amazons of other countries (France, UK, Germany, Japan, etc.)
• Bugs: the program is still not at version 1.0, and I’ve occasionally encountered errors. There’s one track in particular that would always crash the app whenever I tried to tag it.
• The .NET requirement: forced me to install Microsoft .NET framework 1.1 even when I already had 2.0 installed. It would be nice if 2.0 was sufficient.

The verdict: I’ve used a number of programs to download album art, including MP3Tag and Mediamonkey (and of course ITunes itself), and I find ITunes Art Importer to be one of the best solutions for quick and easy album art importing. The program is not perfect but I am certain that, going forward it will get better and the few bugs it has will be fixed. If you use ITunes I highly recommend this one.

Compatibility: WinAll. Requires Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1, and ITunes ver. 4.5 or higher.

Go to to the program page  to get the latest version (approx. 317K).

Rating: 5

Version tested: 0.14

MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter will combine a number of MP3 files into a single .M4B audiobook file. Ipod M4B audiobooks support a number of features including remembering last listening position and the ability to adjust reading speed.

Having recently transferred an audiobook consisting of some 56 MP3 files into my new IPhone, I realized that it wasn’t possible to use ’song shuffle’ without getting these files played as well, interrupting the music, and requiring a human intervention. I had tagged these MP3s as "audiobook" genre but being as there is no "shuffle songs from all genres except" function I started searching for an MP3 to Audiobook converter and found this program. (Why use an app like this instead of an audio converter or transcoder? because it will both convert and combine in one action, as well as provide an interface for sorting chapters correctly and editing the tag info of the resulting audiobook).

Fitst, here’s a list of reasons why Apple’s audiobook M4B format is a good thing:

• Combines all the different MP3s constituting the different chapters into an easy to manage single M4B file.
• Will not get played when using song shuffle
• Remembers the last listening position and allows you to get back right at the point where you left off.
• Allows you to adjust the reading speed.

Here are some notes on this program:

• Will combine as well as convert all MP3 files into a single M4B audiobook.
• Very simple; load MP3s and convert. Supports drag and drop.
• You have to make sure that the files are in the correct sort order; sort order for individual MP3 files corresponds to their sort order in explorer (i.e. in the directory where they reside).
• The program allows for adjusting the sort order of files individually (move up/move down).
• MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter will allow you to modify/set tag information for your file straight from the program interface.

Wish list (or how this program can be even better):

• Support for other audio formats (esp. Ogg Vorbis) not just MP3
• Allow for moving up/down of blocks of files or multiple file selections.

The verdict: I like it; hit me with those audiobooks, baby!.

Compatibility: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Mac and Linux versions promised soon.

Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 14 megs). Also visit the program home page.

Rating

Version tested: 1.0.0.8

Ipodifier is a video to Ipod conversion software that can be scheduled to scan user-specified directories for video files and, when found, convert these to Ipod mp4 videos. Once the conversion is complete it can transfer the resulting video to iTunes and your Ipod. The basic premise is that if you capture videos from a source such as TiVo, SageTV or another device or download through Torrent or any another source, Ipodifier can be set up to work with these files once they become available and take them through all the necessary steps to get them on your Ipod without any user intervention.

Picture this: you’re sleeping, but your favorite TV show is being saved on your computer’s hard drive from TiVo or Torrent. As soon as the download or capture is finally completed, Ipodifier starts converting it based on your pre-defined conversion settings. When done, it transfers the files to your Ipod. In the morning your TV show is ready for you to watch on the bus ride to work.

At least that’s the basic idea. Here’s what you need to know about this program:

• Setup is extremely easy to do using the video-source wizard.
• It will run in the background and monitor any folder you specify for video content. You can specify the length of the period between each scanning of the directory.
• You can tell it exactly which file extensions to look for (e.g. “*.avi,*.mpg” to look for all AVI and MPG files). Can convert WMV files as well as DVR-MS.
• You can limit actual video encoding/conversion to specific times (e.g. only encode between 2am to 8am). You can also set the priority of transcoding process (normal, high, or only when idle). 
• Setting up the video encoding settings is a breeze using the wizard. Choose from 3 quality settings (good, better, best). Can encode using 320×240, 320×180, 640×480, or original video resolution.
• Itunes integration: can add TV shows to iTunes as podcasts. I do not use iTunes and cannot evaluate this, but apparently this allows different people to subscribe to the show feeds they want even on different computers.

Here are a few notes on my personal experience using Ipodifier:

• Video conversion works really well; very fast/efficient conversions. I selected the ’best’ quality setting and got excellent quality results.
• Cannot say much about the iTunes integration. Sorry. (What do I use instead of iTunes? Floola, of course).
• May be a bit buggy: I told it to look for all files (*) in my video download directory, however torrent downloaded a non-video file before my video was complete. Ipodifier spent the whole night trying to convert that file, erroring out, and re-trying. I am certain this and any other bugs will be eventually ironed out.

This program is a rarity: its original, its interesting, it looks good, it works well, and its free. Enough said.

Compatibility: WinAll.

Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 7.8 megs). Also visit the program home page.

Version tested: 1.0.0.83

Ipod Video Converter for Free converts a myriad of video formats into Ipod-compliant MP4 container videos, including WMV, MKV, ASF, FLV and VOB as well as the usual AVI (DivX, Xvid) and Mpeg formats. It will also download and convert Youtube Videos.

[Update Jan 17 2008: since reviewing version 1.0.0.83 of this program, the author has released newer ADWARE versions. Although not malicious, I nonetheless DO NOT recommend using these adware versions. Unfortunately I no longer have the setup file for the non-adware version, but will find it soon and post it on this page.] 

From the makers of Free Easy CD DVD Burner comes this straightforward video-to-Ipod conversion program. What’s interesting about this is the number of formats that it can handle, not least the FLV format that Youtube and other sites have made ubiquitous. Here’s what you need to know about this program.

Note on Ipod video resolution . The maximum resolution for an Ipod compatible video depends on the Ipod’s firmware version. For Ipods with firmware 1.2 or later the max resolution is 640×480 or lower. Ipods with earlier firmware versions can handle video resolutions up to 320×240 (more info here). I would advise you to check your Ipod’s firmware version (from the Ipod main menu > settings > about) and update the firmware using the iTunes sofware if necessary. Maximum audio bitrate is 160bps.

The interface: very simple.. Allows batch encoding of files. Also includes a video preview option which I suggest you switch off as it will slow down the conversion process.

Custom settings: you can change these depending on the output resolution, quality, and file size you want. Unfortunately, there is no documentation to speak of for this program that I could find either with the installed program itself or on the developer’s website (or on third-party websites for that matter). It is possible to get a good, high quality converted video nonetheless.

• If you want, you can pick the easy “Ipod Standard Format” setting from the main menu. I do not recommend this, as the quality of the standard 320×240 resolution is too low in my opinion.
• For Video: The most annoying thing about this program’s custom settings is the lack of an option to scale the video resolution down while maintaining the original video’s aspect ratio. As it is this has to be done manually. I have had good results setting the output resolution by calculating a new size that is nearest to the Ipod’s 640×480 resolution whilst maintaining the height and width proportionality as per the original. I would set aspect ration to be the same as the original as well. (you can use MediaInfo to get all of this information on almost any video; you can also use Video Size Calculator to help you calculate the new size).
• Frame rate: Ipod Video Converter for Free doesn’t seem to force you to enter this and I have had good results without messing with it. If you must enter something why not use the same frame rate as the original (again from MediaInfo).
• Bitrate control Mode: with no documentation whatsoever my guess is that (a) constant bitrate is the fastest; (b) 2-pass VBR provides the best quality but takes longer than (a) to convert; (c) manual VBR is probably better quality than (a) but faster than (b); and (d) Automatic VBR is probably best quality and longest time. Don’t quote me on any of this; pick one that seems like it suits your needs best and try it out.
• Target bitrate / bitrate range / VBV buffer size, and Encode Mode: I didn’t touch any of these and got excellent results. Can’t give you more info, I’m afraid.
• For Audio: my advice; set to 160bps (the max the Ipod can use), 48Khz, stereo. This way you get the best possible audio (believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing more annoying that low quality sound when you’re trying to watch a video over the din of a bus or other crowded public place).

YouTube: copy the URLs of the videos you want from YouTube and paste them into this program singly or in batches. It can then download them for you all at once and optionally convert them into Ipod MP4 files at 320×240 resolution. Alternately you could download the FLV and convert them later using custom settings if you want better quality.

The Verdict: this program supports WMV as well as FLV conversions, which is unusual for a free Ipod video converter, and can also download and convert videos from YouTube. But most important, the video conversions themselves are very good and I have not had any audio/video sync or other problems when I tested it. Although it could have been simpler and much more streamlined, it is generally fairly easy to use. ”One-click” type conversions with one or two quality and/or size choices would have been great and an option to “preserve original aspect ratio” in the video settings would have made this program significantly better, but I still think this software is a very competent converter overall. The next time I need to convert a video to Ipod format this is probably be the program that I will use.

Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista.

Go to the developer’s page to download the latest version (approx 6.18 megs). You may need to select Ipod Video Converter for Free the menu on the left hand side. Although the download page presents a form for entering in your information, you actually do not need to do this. Just click the ’Download’ button.

Sideload.com is a sister website to MP3Tunes.com which aggregates all MP3 files that the users of MP3Tunes have found on the web and “sideloaded” into their MP3Tunes lockers. Sideload allows you to search MP3s, listen to them and/or copy them into your own MP3Tunes account.

This review will adopt the question and answer format:

Q: Where does this music come from? What is Sideloading?
A: Sideloading refers to music files that users of MP3Tunes.com find on the net and ask MP3Tunes to download straight into their MP3Tunes Locers. This is done from within the browser using either the Internet Explorer or Fireforx extensions of Oboe, MP3Tunes’ music management/uploading software. For more info on MP3Tunes check out the Freewaregenius review here.

Q: Can anyone use the Sideload.com service? Do you have to have an MP3Tunes.com account?
A: Anyone can use the Sideload.com website to search for and listen to music. You can also download files to your hard drive or transfer them into your MP3Tunes.com locker. You can get a locker for free on the MP3Tunes.com website

Q: What kind of music is available? How many files does the service provide?
A: There apparently are more than 250,000 files available on Sideload, from every conceivable genre.
Q: Is this music legal?
A: Sideload is populated by users, and Sideload.com’s policy requires that no anauthorized files be Sideloaded; unauthorized tracks are “removed upon notification”. From the website: “Sideload.com does not store any music, but rather links to files publicly available other places on the net. Sideload.com respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same”.
All of this notwithstanding, you will find that all kinds of music is available, the great majority of which is probably not legal.

Q: Do the mp3 files have proper tags and artist information.
A: It all depends on what files people Sideload; Some do and some don’t

Q: Any last words.
A: Yes. Sideload is coo!. Browsing the most popular sideloads is a great way to be exposed to new, (mostly) good music.

Go to Sideload.com.

MP3Tunes.com is a web service that allows you to store your music collection online and offers unlimited storage space for this, even for free accounts. It makes your music available for you to listen to or download from anywhere through the MP3Tunes.com web interface.

How it works: first, you create an account (called a ’locker’) with MP3Tunes.com. Initially this will likely have a 1-Gig maximum ceiling, but eventually will be upgraded to unlimited storage. There are a number of ways to upload/download your music into your locker, foremost of which is Oboe, a little program for Windows, Mac, or Linux which is installed locally and can sync your audio files between your hard drive and your online locker (or you could just do one way uploads or downloads if you prefer).

If you are downloading music from the internet you could use ’webload’, a feature within the MP3Tunes.com site, that will transfer the files (if you have the URL to download from), straight into your locker, without the need to download on the hard drive first. MP3Tunes.com also provides plugins for IE and Firefox that can identify tracks that you might encounter on websites and ’sideload’ these straight into your locker.

What would you do with unlimited online storage for your MP3s? Here are some of the possibilities:

• Make your music collection available anywhere there is an internet connection. Tired of lugging that external hard drive with all your MP3’s to work and back? Good, because once you upload all of your audio files to MP3Tunes you wouldn’t need to do that any more; you can have your music streamed into your work computer through the MP3Tunes.com website.
• Safely back-up all of your music: just imagine; you have your entire 80 Gigabytes of music in an external drive which you accidentally drop. Not a pretty image. With MP3Tunes you can have all that music backed up safely on the MP3Tunes.com servers.
• Store your entire music library in a single location. my music collection, for example, is 80 Gigs and growing. I have a 60 Gig Ipod and can only afford to store 25 Gigs or so worth of music on my laptop. The only way I can everything in one place is to buy an external hard drive. MP3Tunes.com is an option that I can resort to instead, although it is an open question whether it would be more convenient than simply buying a hard drive (see below).

Sounds good! – but how well does it really work? After using this service for a while, here’s what I found

• Music quality is very good; and streaming works well and without problems.
• Files that are re-downloaded retain the original bitrate and quality; it does not seem that there is any re-encoding or alteration of the file.
• The player offered on the MP3Tunes.com website is very competent; music is navigated through a Windows Explorer-style hierarchical structure by artist, album or playlist. A search box is available that can help find what you want quickly. The player also allows for quick and easy creation of playlists.
• On my DSL connection with wireless router I was able to get upload speeds of 45k/sec, while downloads were 200k/sec on average. To transfer my entire 80 Gigs worth of music I would therefore probably need several nights of uploading.
• It seems that there is no way to fix/edit tags for the music inside your locker; let’s face it, though, you were never going to get round to doing it anyway . I might mention here that with the paid service it is possible to automatically sync album art.
• The free version of this service is supported by ads, and maximum file size is restricted to maximum of 10 megs. Album artwork is also suppressed in the free version.
• Plugins are available for iTunes and Winamp that enable streaming/playing your music straight into these media players. I don’t use any of these so I was not able to test this.

Differences between paid and free versions: The only feature that I really want that the paid service offers ($39.95 annually) is album art displays and the ability to sync these with the music files. Other features offered are support for DRM protected iTunes tracks, a max file size of 50 megs, customer support, and playing music on “web capable” devices.
The Verdict: this service offers very reliable downloads and uploads and excellent quality streaming. Uploading all of your music, however, can be a lot of work if you have a huge library, and simply buying a hard drive may be more convenient, especially if you do a lot of maintenance on your audio files in terms of fixing tag information and album art. That being said my advice to you is to go ahead and try it; it is free, and although initially getting all of your audio files uploaded can be a little bit time consuming, it may well pay off dividends in terms of convenience and the ability to listen to your library from anywhere; not to mention simply having your music stashed away safely.

Go to the mp3tunes.com page.

Version tested: b29

Floola is a small, cross platform app that can copy music files, video files, and playlists to and from your Ipod on any computer without having iTunes installed.You can also use it to manage your audio collection straight on the Ipod, including editing or deleting files and or artist/album/genre information, as well as creating playlist and/or playing your Ipod-resident music files. It can also manage Motorolla phones that are supported by iTunes.

Here’s what you need to know about this software:

• Yes you read it correctly; finally a free iTunes replacement that can move video files to and from the Ipod
• Installation is a breeze, and involves simply moving the Floola executable into the Ipod from within the Windows file system. Note that you have to (a) enable the Ipod as a portable hard drive (Ipod will appear in ’My Computer’), and (b) switch off the Auto-sync option in iTunes (to prevent iTunes from erasing the files you independently copy to your Ipod with Floola). To uninstall, simply delete Floola from the Ipod.
• Installing Floola on the Ipod itself means that you could copy files to/from your Ipod on any PC; just plug it in, run Floola, and you’re on your way.
• Search functionality allows you to immediately find the songs, videos, artists, albums, and/or genres you’re looking for.
• Tag/information editing of your songs is possible, including adding Lyrics to your songs (you can upload these your type them in yourself inside Floola).
• Other services offered by Floola: finding duplicates and, managing notes on your Ipod .
• Can show song/album artwork; also supports loading artwork for your tracks/albums from the hard drive.
• Supports last.fm (not sure what this is about – an online music community).
• Ipod repair: the first thing Floola did once I got it installed and running was tell me that my Ipod needed repair and proceed to fix it. I must say, however, that I wasn’t aware of any problems before the fix, and did not notice any changes after.

I am ecstatic about this program, simply because of all of Windows’ free iTunes replacement programs, Floola is the only one that can move video files to/from the Ipod (neither Yamipod no’r Sharepod do this at the time of this writing). This also means that, unless you want iTunes’ online music store services, you can go ahead and uninstall it from your system (note that Floola and iTunes CAN coexist). If I could wish for anything it would just be the ability to download track/album artwork from an online resource.

Compared to iTunes, Floola is lightweight and much more straightforward. Its also fast, and offers a ’fast mode’ for very large libraries. Although it is still in beta and may contain some bugs, Floola is already my iTunes replacement of choice, and I highly recommend it.

Go to the download page to download the latest version. The program home page.

Version tested: 2.3

Free YouTube to iPod Converter is a tool that can download YouTube flash (FLV) videos and convert them into Ipod Video, PSP, or Mobile device compliant MP4 video file formats.

Here’s how it works. Find a video on YouTube that you want and copy its URL, then paste it into “Free YouTube to iPod Converter”. Next choose the quality setting for your desired video and, after a brief wait (depending on the size of the video file) your file is done, ready to be uploaded into your Ipod or device.

What’s really cool about this program is that for each type of supported device (Ipod, PSP, mobile) it has three predefined quality settings that you could choose from that make it extremely easy to use. The user has nothing more to decide than low, medium, and high quality. After that the video is downloaded and converted efficiently and , in my experience, without problems (no missing audio, no audio/video sync problems).

The only thing I don’t like about this program is a splash screen that cannot be turned off and feels like a borderline nag screen. Otherwise this is a very handy tool that does the job well.

Compatibility: WinAll.

Go to the program home page to download the latest version.

Version tested: 2.5.4.978

MediaMonkey is an advanced music manager comprising a music player, cd ripper, audio converter, ID3 Tag editor, and playlist generator. It also supports external MP3 players, including the Ipod.

If you’ve been looking for a free program that can be a kind of one-stop-shop of audio, doing everything that you might possibly want to do with your library of audio files (and doing it well) – MediaMonkey just might be that program.

Here are some of the reasons why this program is so cool:

• Audio format conversions. Supported formats are MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, and FLAC.
• Rips and burns music CD’s.
• Powerful Tag editing functionality: as good as it gets, with support for importing ID3 tags and album art from external resources like Amazon and Freedb. Auto tagging tracks and saving album art from Amazon is just beautiful!
• Organization: allows you to automatically change your music library’s folder structure based on your audio files’ tag information.
• Dynamic Playlists: you can easily create these, e.g. “all tracks from the ‘Electronic’ genre from 2004 to 2006″. Unfortunately, advanced dynamic playlists based on multiple criteria are only availabe in the paid ‘Gold’ version of the program.
• Search: makes it possible to find the music you are looking for in a snap.
• It offers versatile scripting support. In fact there are hundreds of downloadable scripts and skins that a community of enthusiasts have created that enable MediaMonkey to do pretty much anything you could think of.
• Also offers compatibility with Winamp 2 plugins.
• Synchronization with MP3 players, including the Ipod is seamless. The paid version allows for automatic file conversion when syncing music with hardware players (this sounds nice but I can certainly live without it).
• It is a music player not an audio player. As far as I am concerned this is a huge PLUS, as this would have been over-reach, and I already have my favorite freeware video players which I am extremely happy with (VLC media player and GOM Player).
• The program also features a motley collection of cool little features, such as controlling the player by mouse gestures, support for skins, a right-click ‘find more from the same’ command that delivers tracks from the same artist, album, genre, etc.
• MediaMonkey seems to me to be less resource intensive than some other shareware ‘Music Management’ software that I have used (specifically Media Center and Musicmatch).

Here are some of the reasons why it is not as cool as it could be:

• The iTunes like interface is functional but not very exciting.
• No support for browsing by album art. This is surprising as many shareware music managers have this. Note that I DID find a script that adds this functionality to MediaMonkey here (works great); it required a bit of manual fiddling with the registry to run properly, though.
• No support for some protected file formats such as WMA v10 and protected AAC files (a non-issue to me, but some might want to know this).
• Forces you to manually install LAME MP3 encoder if you want to still be able to encode and convert to MP3 after 30 days of installation. This is a nuisance, but doable fairly easily (click here for instructions).

Differences between free and paid versions: The two most important features that the paid version provides are (1) real-time audio library scanning, which keeps your library updated without you telling MediaMonkey to re-scan your folders, and (2) advanced dynamic playlist generation for multiple criteria (e.g. I want a playlist for all ‘Rock’ genre tracks rated 4 and above where the year is between 2005 and 2006). Other differences include the need to manually install the MP3 encoder I mentioned above, plus a few others which to me aren’t that significant.

For all of MediaMonkey’s functions you could find strong 100% freeware titles that can do each one of them seperately. You could have the Music Management and dynamic playlists portion with the excellent MusikCube, ID3 Tagging and Amazon/CDDB resources are offered with Mp3Tag, and encoding and converting is offered by many programs, e.g. BonkEnc. MediaMonkey offers all of these functions at the same place, does a really good job at each one of them, and syncs with external MP3 players and the Ipod (as of this writing MusikCube does not have Ipod support).

Additionally, one of the real strengths of MediaMonkey is the community that has grown around it of people who absolutely love it (and create all sorts of scripts and plugins for it). If you’re an Ipod owner and do not want to use iTunes you could do worse than use MediaMonkey. I recommend it higly.

Go to the download page for the latest version. The program home page.

Vixy is a website that provides 3 services; it can download YouTube and other embedded FLV videos straight into a number of different video formats, including Ipod MP4, and it can Generate video RSS feeds or video Podcasts using either a YouTube URL or keyword search.

I’ve been looking for a good solution for how to download YouTube videos into Ipod MP4 video for some time, and this is certainly it. I’ve found some software that does this, but the quality of the MP4 video was rather poor. I am happy to report that Vixy’s video conversions are simply excellent.

Note that Vixy allows download into a number of formats. In addition to Ipod MP4, it supports DivX encoded AVI, 3GP for Mobile, and Mac MOV format. Or if you are interested in only downloading the audio track into MP3 it can do that as well. I somehow expect that the list of supported formats will continue to grow.

Vixy is also an excellent resource for creating video RSS feeds. I used it to create a feed by keyword search and it did a great job. The RSS feed will update automatically whenever new videos are posted that are related to your search term. 

This service is really cool, really fast, and, if you have an Ipod and are interested in YouTube videos, it is simply a gift.

Go to the Vixy home page.

For Google Video:
Google Video now allows you to download videos straight into MP4 Ipod video format (see screenshot). My advice to you if you have a lot of videos already downloaded is to simply re-download in the MP4 format.

For YouTube
The Vixy web site provides an online conversion service that is fast and efficient (click here for a review of Vixy on Freewaregenius). 

Another, less elegant solution is as follows:

• Download your Youtube video using Vdownloader in AVI format (yes, this program does exactly that).
• Re-Encode the AVI video file into MP4 using Free Ipod Video Converter.

If you already have a lot of .FLV files downloaded and do not want to re-download
You could convert your .FLV files into MP4’s in any of the following ways:

• Use Mediacoder to convert .FLV into MP4’s (Mediacoder is a freeware universal video and audio format converter).
• Use Riva FLV Encoder to convert .FLV into .AVI, and then re-encode the .AVI to .MP4 with Free Ipod Video Converter. 
• IF you do not want to do the above you could go to the Media-Convert site and they will do the conversion for you. You will have to wait for the file to upload, convert, and download again though. The file has to be a maximum size of 50megs, however, as they do not accept file sizes over that.

If you have other ideas on how to do this, please leave your comments below!
 

Version tested:  1.34 build 892

Free Ipod Video Converter is a tool that converts most video file formats into MP4 files, the video format playable by video Ipods (as well as the Sony PSP).

It is a simple yet solid program that delivers exactly what it promises. Supported formats include AVI, MPEG, WMV (ASF), RM, RMVB, DivX, and ASF.  It also converts VOB files, which means that you can rip a DVD to your hard drive (see the RipIt4Me review) and then convert the VOBs straight MP4s (I tried this and it works very well, although you do end up with 4 to 7 MP4s, depending on how many VOBs you have. You can then merge them together with a freeware program called Yamb).

Video conversion is done quite literally in 4 clicks. First: select the file/files to convert (will process files in batches); second: select size in pixels (you will typically default to the Ipod’s maximum 320×240): third; set the quality sliders for both audio and video (a process which will also show you an estimated file size to help you make a decision); finally, if you choose to, you can type in any tag info for your video file, or the program will get this info automatically if the input files contains them.

This program’s ease of use and reliability make it my favorite Ipod video converter. It is also quick and efficient and, unlike other similar programs I tried, did not produce any audio/video sync problems when I used it.

What I really like about this program is the sheer simplicity; no fussing with profiles, different bitrates, framerates, aspect ratios, etc. It keeps it simple and is simply a gem.

Go to download page for latest version. The program home page. (If links are broken, download here).