Vuze: All-In-One Video Downloader and Converter to All Portable Formats

Vuze, the popular BitTorrent client formerly known as Azureus, has received a major update which allows users to automatically convert and play downloaded videos on the iPhone, iPod, Xbox 360 and the PS3. “Now playing, on all your screens” is Vuze’s new tagline.


In other words, it starts from the BitTorrent core basis and creates a vast network for video discovery and user-created video publishing all connected through social networking.

With the latest version, Vuze adds a new split-window MyTorrents view offering support for categories and advanced downloading / seeding / queuing rules for effective and automated torrent management, a user interface that will resonate right from the start with iTunes users and which offers many customization options, seeding from read-only media, and considerable cutbacks on resource consumption.

In offering a general indication of your torrents and media playback controls, the new layout highlights user-initiated searches.

The multiplatform that Vuze client has become is wide-ranging offering lots of features and options: manages multiple downloads simultaneously from a single GUI window, detailed real-time download status and info with export to XML, advanced download and seeding management rules, extended configuration settings and torrent creation wizards, embedded tracker that allows easy and automated hosting of your files, a proxy, for both tracker and peer communications, PeerGuardian IP address filtering, web browser and console UIs, multiple languages function (27), a powerful plug-in interface, and a lot more.

Vuze currently supports Apple devices including the iPhone and the iPod. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are the two gaming consoles that integrate with Vuze as well. More devices may be added in the future but no decisions have yet been made on which ones, TorrentFreak was told. In a recent poll, most Vuze users indicated that iPhone/iPod support was most wanted.

Once device support is turned on in Vuze, users can drag and drop downloaded video onto their device of choice. Vuze will then convert the video into the appropriate format and add it to the device’s library.

For iTunes, Vuze will import the video into your iTunes library so it can be transferred to your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. For the PS3 and Xbox 360, Vuze will stream the videos from your PC or Mac directly to your game console.

The device support is a great feature for users who want to have an easy all-in-one solution that not only downloads video, but also makes it ready to play on other devices. Although Vuze has been focusing mainly on video lately, the client can still download other content as well.

Website: http://www.vuze.com/app

System Requirement:

PC

• Windows XP or Vista
• 2 Gigahertz processor, 1 GB of RAM and DirectX 9.0 compliant video and sound
• Internet Explorer or Firefox

Mac

• Mac OS 10.4.8+ (Intel-based) Intel Core Duo 1.83-gigahertz or higher processor with 1GB of RAM
• Safari or Firefox 

iDumpr - Free stand-alone utility for iPod

Usually, good and successful gadgets attract more attention from the software developers and cause creating multiple supporting freeware and commercial products. There are many utilities already, developed for iPod use, but there are more coming to the market…

iDump is a standalone tool that enables you to copy all, or selected, files from your iPod to your computer. It automatically detects your iPod and generates a list of the content from which you can select the files to be copied. The long list can be narrowed via the search function. Songs can be organized by terms as familiar as song name or artist to the more esoteric year, bit rate, or even location on the iPod. The app displays the song’s iPod path, cracking Apple’s unusual file-saving protocol.

iDump supports output templates and can automatically create folders based on the artist and song information. You can also search your iPod by keyword, create a playlist from the selected songs and set rules for unattended transfers. The portable version of the utility is available.

Features:

1. Output formatting. This gives you the option to select an output directory and the way the songs will be transferred.

2. Unattended Transfer. This option is extremely useful for those who own one of the larger iPod’s. Simply enable this feature in the options page, and it will deal with common transfer errors and problems, such as what to do if a song already exists on the destination drive, etc.

3. Search Option.

4. Playlists. If you use playlists on your iPod then this gives you the option to select any of the playlists and display the song within the selected list only.

5. Export Playlists. This option will export all of your playlists in to the standard .m3u format.

Available Languages: English, German, Spanish.

OS: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows Vista.

Website:
http://www.codershole.com/idump.php?id=b811d4dc7f0bca0e3de1deb776e95389

Download No Install Exe Version:
http://www.codershole.com/downloads.php?id=b811d4dc7f0bca0e3de1deb776e95389&dl=5

License: Freeware.

How to Convert DVD to iPod Format

Do you have a ton of DVD’s? Are you interesting in watching them on your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV? The free multi-platform open-source software Handbrake is everything you need to rip DVD’s into MPEG-4 video files for these purposes.

System Requirements:

• An iPod, iPhone or Apple TV.
• 500 MHz processor or better with at least 16MB of video RAM.
• QuickTime 7.0.3 or later.
• iTunes 6.0.1 or later.

1) Download and install HandBrake. If you download version 0.9.2 you must be running Leopard. If you are using Tiger or older, you should download 0.9.1

To download installation files for other operating systems, go to the developers Website: http://handbrake.fr/

2) Place the DVD you wish to rip into your DVD drive and open HandBrake you just installed. If your computer tries to play the DVD automatically, close the program so that only HandBrake is accessing the DVD.

3) Click the Source button in the top left corner. Then choose your DVD drive and click Open. At this point HandBrake will begin to scan the DVD. This could take a couple minutes.

4) Click the drop down box next to Title and choose the longest title if you wish to copy the entire DVD (this does not apply to Episode based DVDs).

5) The default Destination is the Desktop. Change this to wherever you wish to save the DVD file.

6) If the presets are not already displayed on the right side of the window, click the Toggle Presets button in the upper right corner to display them.

7) For the iPhone and iPod Touch you should choose iPhone / iPod Touch.
If you have an iPod video or iPod classic and want high resolution (much larger file size, good for 160GB versions) choose iPod High-Rez.

Lastly, if you have an iPod Video or iPod classic and want smaller files (good for 80GB versions) choose iPod Low-Rez.

TIP: For better quality, choose 2-pass encoding. This will take longer to encode but will look better.

8.) Click the Audio & Subtitles tab. Here you should choose the language you prefer under “Track 1:”. Also, be sure toset Subtitles to None. The Sample rate should be between 32 and 48 while the Bitrate should be set between 112 and 160.

9) At this point you should be ready to begin ripping your DVD. Click Start to begin.

10) Once your DVD is finished ripping all you need to do is add it to your iTunes library (or whatever iPod manager you use) and then transfer it to your iPod.

Troubleshooting 

If you have trouble with the video and audio settings from the presets, you should try the following settings instead. These settings are more strict and should work on any iPod with video capabilities.

File format: MP4 file Codecs: MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio Average bitrate (kbps): 700 (again lower numbers mean less quality and smaller files) Check 2-pass encoding Picture settings -> set Width: 320 and the height will auto adjust to something close to 240 (will be lower for widescreen movies).

Once you find the settings that work the best for you, you can save them as a custom preset.

Additional Reading:
http://wlmtips.com/2008/06/02/how-to-rip-dvds-to-your-ipod-using-handbrake-mac-monday/
http://ipod.about.com/od/addingvideotoyouripod/ss/ipod_dvd_ih.htm
http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/handbrake/index.shtml

Video Tutorial:

Floola - Freeware Portable iPod Manager

Floola is a freeware application dedicated to the efficient management of your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes) under Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Operating systems. Floola application is portable, and it can be used directly from your iPod and needs no installation.

Floola supports all common used iPod features including photos, artwork, podcasts and smart playlists. It automatically converts any incompatible for the mobile device audio or video file, so that you can copy almost any file to it. It even allows adding Youtube and Myspace videos with a single click to the device.

Main features:

• Works on any Windows (from Windows98 to Windows Vista), any Mac and any Linux distribution with GTK installed.
• Do not require installation, and can be executed directly from iPod or any PC.
• Copy, add and extract songs to and from iPod.
• Easily manage, import and export playlists (m3u, pls).
• Works with podcasts and Last.fm.
• Add video files to iPod just copying the page URL address.
• Multilanguage support.
• Lyric support iPods (3G and above).
• Easily find duplicated and lost songs on iPod.
• Add artwork to your songs.
• Convert audio and video incompatible formats.
• Create HTML files containing list of your iPod files.
• Add pictures to your iPod, and much more…
  

Website: http://www.floola.com/home/

Direct download (iPod): http://www.floola.com/home/download_win

Direct download (Windows): http://www.floola.com/home/download_desktopwin

YamiPod - free portable iPod Manager

YamiPod is a FREE stand alone portable iPod manager that allows user to manage the content of the iPod without even having iTunes installed. This allows copuing mp3 and ACC files to and from iPod. You can also remove duplicate song entries, import or export play-lists etc.

Here is a brief description of the features in YamiPod:

• Stand alone portable program, with no installation required.
• Supports Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux Operating Systems.
• Automatic iPod recognition.
• Mp3 and AAC files can be easily copied to/from iPod.
• Read and write access to mp3 id3 and AAC information.
• Playlist support (On-The-Go included).
• Playlists import and export (PLS,M3U)
• Full Unicode support.
• Auto-recognition and auto-downloading new versions and updates.
• Advanced song import/export settings.
• Restore features.
• Built-in music player.
• Advanced search capabilities.
• Ability to remove duplicated tracks.
• Easy ratings edit.
• PC to iPod synchronization.
• Creating and editing notes (with Unicode support).
• Uploading news RSS and podcasts to iPod.
• Growl support (Apple only).
• Exporting song lists to HTML or plain text files.
• Supports multiple iPod devices.
• Last.fm support.

Developers Website: http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/

Direct Link for the software downloading (for Windows): http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/downloads/yam-win.torrent

Operate you iPod with ease of USB Drive with SharePod

It is a dream of every music player owner to be able to use its device as USB stick. It would be nice, if the iPod can be connected to the computer, and the songs and videos transfer between computer and player can be achieved with the same ease as transfer inside the computer. With no need to synchronize content of iPod with computer’s music and video library.

SharePod is application that makes the process easy and reliable. The new software version 3.8 has been released on April 2, 2008.

So, what is SharePod? SharePod 3 is a lightweight music management program for iPod. You can copy music and videos between your iPod and computers without any additional conversion and synchronization procedures and with no extra software installed.

Software is easy to use. Download SharePod and extract the contents of the zip file to your iPod drive. As this procedure is completed, your iPod will appear as a Removable Drive in My Computer when it is plugged in.

Program features:

1. You can copy songs and playlists from your iPod to your PC.
2. You can copy songs from a PC to your iPod with no need for iTunes.
3. Customize and optimize organization of copied files - you can choose your own folder and filename structure.
4. While software can be used without iTunes, if needed, integration with iTunes can be easily achieved - once you have copied music to your PC, you can easily add it to your iTunes library.
5. Software has built-in media player for your convenience.
6. Searching capabilities by various criteria: by Title, Artist, Album, Genre (or any combination).
7. You can create Winamp playlists from the music on your iPod so you can listen without copying the mp3 audio files to your computer.
8. iPod Network File Sharing - If you are on a network, and you enable the special feature, other users can run your copy of SharePod from their own computers, and download music directly from your iPod.
9. No messy install/uninstall process - SharePod is just a couple of files, and is running directly from the iPod, so you do not need to install anything in the computer you are using.
10. User-friendly and intuitive interface with drag-and-drop capabilities.

Link for downloading (from Tom's Guide): http://www.tomsguide.com/us/download/SharePod,0301-1954.html

Additional Reading:
http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/06/how-to-use-sharepod-to-copy-files-to-and-from-your-ipod-in-windows/
http://jeff-dev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sharepod-38-released.html
http://www.freewarefiles.com/Sharepod_program_26104.html