Video-a-Go-Go: Methods For Syncing Videos to Your iPhone

The iPhone itself has as one of its cores the ability to be
a portable media player.  Most people are
used to the essential music playing function of the iPod, but the video market
has been a little more difficult for the transition.  Videos come in a number of ways and getting
them and viewing them on your iPhone is specific for different
circumstances.  Here are a number of ways
to get videos onto your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Apple keeps a slave like control over its device through
iTunes, and it limits the type of video files can get on the iPhone.  It does this so that people will just
purchase them for full price from iTunes instead of using P2P networks or other
reduced cost methods.  The basic method
of buying and downloading video from iTunes is similar to the way that you
purchase pay applications from the iTunes’ App Store.  You start by making sure you are logged in to
iTunes and then locating the video that you want to purchase.  From here you essentially just select Buy and
the video will begin downloading.  Once
it has finished you plug in your iPhone to your computer, which will
immediately try to sync it.  Stop the
sync and select your iPhone from the left hand panel.  Here you go in and find the Videos tab, then
select to sync the specific video that you have just downloaded.  Then once you sync again you will transfer
that video file onto your iPhone.

 You can easily
download and install videos right from the iTunes function right on your
iPhone.  This is relatively self
explanatory as it goes through the same process as downloading them from iTunes
on your computer.  First, search and find
the video you would like to download. 
Sign in to iTunes and then select to purchase that video, which will set
it to begin downloading directly to your iPhone.  When you sync your iPhone back to your
computer you will be asked if purchased items from your iPhone should be synced
back to your computer, which is a nice option so that you have the file on more
than one location.  In this way it acts
as both a back up and a second viewing location.  You are very limited by downloading videos
from your iPhone, so if you are going to do it you should try to use a very
strong and stable Wi-Fi connection instead of the 3G network.  Even if you do use a powerful Wi-Fi network you are still not going to be able to download everything you want.  Instead you are going to want to go ahead and plug into your sync computer for larger files.

There is an obvious problem with this as many DVD and
Blu-Ray owners would like to put the movie that they have purchased onto their
iPhone or iPod Touch without any problem. 
One way to get around this was to include Digital Copies in the disc you
purchase, but this only happens in certain rare cases on mostly Blu-Ray
discs.  If you are lucky enough to get a
disc with a digital copy included insert the DVD-Rom into the DVD drive on your
computer.  It will connect to an online
server and begin asking you a few basic gate keeping questions before
transferring your over to iTunes. 

Inside
iTunes you will be transferred to the location where you enter Redemption
Codes.  You will already have a
Redemption Code on an insert inside the DVD or Blu-Ray case for the film.  Once you enter in that Redemption Code your
Digital Copy of the film will begin downloading from iTunes’ immediately.  Once it is done downloading you will just go
through the normal process of installing the video onto your iPhone.

The most important thing to know is how to put videos onto
your iPhone outside the confines of purchasing and downloading them from
iTunes.  The easiest way to get any video
into the proper format for iPhone syncing is to use a video conversion program.  Luckily there are dozens available online as
freeware, which means that they will end up not costing you a thing (try HandBreak it will work on Mac and PC and it does a great job) .  Each program is slightly different, but each
one will essentially be based around a function you want for the final video
instead of a file type. 

This means that
you will want to find an iPhone / iPod specific video converter that will take
any major video file type and convert it for your iPhone.  This will take your original video file and
essentially make a copy of it in the iPhone friendly .MP4 format.  Once you find one you will select a location
for the final video file to go and then set the video conversion process in
motion. 

Once the converted video is
available you are going to want to get it onto your iTunes’ library in the
proper location.  Go to the left hand
panel and choose either Movies or TV Shows, depending on the video type.  Then drag and drop the .MP4 file onto the
library in the main panel.  Once this is
on there you will go through the normal syncing process, which includes
selecting for that file to sync to your iPhone specifically.