Prep your video for the iPod with Podner
So you've got a shiny, new iPod and you're ready to produce some of your own video for it. Or, you're a long time podcaster and you're thinking of adding video to your arsenal. If either of these scenarios sound familiar, check out Podner.
It's really pretty simple to use. I tried it out on both a 2MB, 240 x 170 mov file I had made with Quicktime, and a 7.8MB AVI I shot with my digital camera. After dropping each file into Podner's well, all I really needed to do was click "Continue" to accept the default settings. You can opt to encode your video as a 320 x 240 MPEG-4, a 480 x 480 MPEG 4, a 320 x 240 H.264 or a 320 x 240 H.264 with multipass. Select from three quality settings (good, better or best) and several categories (I chose "home movies") and Podner does its thing.
It then creates a "podner" playlist in iTunes to store your creations. Pretty handy. Podner requires Quicktime 7.0 or better, iTunes 6.x and Mac OS 10.4 or better. It will cost you $9.95US (like the website says, compare that to $30 for Quicktime Pro).
