Managing an iPod and all that goes along with it (the music, the photos and the videos) can be somewhat of a chore. For Mac users, this may not be too much of a challenge, since they've likely already been using iTunes for their music management. But what about Windows users, who may have all their music arranged and organized just the way they like it, in Windows Media Player? For those people, two programs are available to make getting the most out of their iPod a snap.
The first program is from Cucusoft. The Cucusoft DVD to iPod Converter is actually two programs, one for converting DVDs to some video formats commonly used by Apple. Among them is the standard mp4 format, using either MPEG-4 or H.264 codecs. There are also several other choices, for people wanting to convert their DVDs to Apple TV, or to use the iPod to play onto a TV, in a variety of sizes.
Ripping a DVD is as simple as inserting the disc into the DVD drive and telling the Cucusoft DVD to iPod Converter to open the DVD. It scans the disc until it identifies the main feature, at which point you simply need to tell the program whether or not to remove any black bars, whether or not you'd like to keep the original format (widescreen or full screen), what format you'd like to save the movie as and where on the hard drive to place the converted file.
Encoding was quite speedy in testing. A 90-minute movie was ripped and encoded in slightly under an hour, and the quality (both video and audio) was excellent. Similar testing of the Video to iPod Converter resulted in a great experience as well. One question some people may have relates to cost. The Cucusoft iPod Video Converter Suite costs money, and there are free tools available to accomplish the same tasks. Is the Video Converter Suite worth it? That, of course, is up to the user, but in testing, everything worked smoothly. There were no surprises, changing settings was a snap and the output was very high quality. All in all, a great product.
The second program, the Tune Tools for iPod (from Valusoft), is designed for people who want to get a bit more out of their iPod experience than even iTunes allows. For instance, Tune Tools for iPod not only handles general music transfers to and from the iPod, but more customized transfers as well. Once the iPod has been identified, a user can clone the iPod, basically making an image of the iPod's hard drive. This image can then be moved to another iPod, so all the songs and settings transfer, essentially creating a copy of the first iPod. Backups, always a necessity in this day and age, are easily accomplished. Simply tell Tune Tools where to save the backed-up files and then - when it comes time to restore the backed-up files - tell it which iPod should be restored.
Finally, Tune Tools for iPod can be used to clean up an iPod that's perhaps been in use for a while. Duplicate files can easily be identified and unnecessary ones deleted. Tag information (which lets an audio file identify itself to a music player) can be edited, so your songs will look exactly the way you want.
So, there it is. Two programs that, combined with a stack of DVDs and an iPod along with your music library, can make managing an iPod a snap.
Eric Fleming
