Ok. You finally bought yourself the IPod that can play videos. Congratulations. I'm actually a little jealous since I don't have one yet. Now, you have thousands of songs uploaded on to it for your listening pleasure but where are your videos? It's actually a pretty common problem people are discovering. They just don't know where to find videos for the IPod.

Have you thought about YouTube? They have tons of movies on anything and everything imaginable. The only issue with them with their videos is that you don't want to stumble on any copyright infringement claims. That can be messy.

However, if you convert the video to a more compatible format, you can easily transfer it to your iPod. Doing this appears to be in compliance with YouTube's Terms of Use and as long as you do not distribute the videos to others and retain any copyright notices on the files, you should all right. Here are few instructions on how to do it for those of you who aren't the most tech savviest of people.

Option 1: Windows

Browsers on a Windows platform don't have any convenient controls for finding and saving the Flash video file from YouTube. You're better off selecting a standalone solution that downloads and produces the file at the same time.

The YouTube to iPod Converter at DVDvideosoft.com works great. It is fast and easy to use, even though it produces MPEG-4 files only, and not H.264. It converts all files to 24 frames per second, while 29.97 fps is the normal frame rate for videos. Bearing in mind the video downloaded from YouTube is already degraded quality; you'll probably not notice the difference.

The program operation is extremely simple: Just copy and paste in the URL, choose a preset, and click "Download & Convert." You're done.

Option 2: Online

Your second option can apply to both Mac and Windows computers and is a free, totally online beta service available at vixy.net.

Simply paste in the URL you want, choose a format, and hit "Start."

The site converts the video to a 320-by-240 MPEG-4 video at 29.97 fps and eliminates the need to download or install any software at all.

Take note of the additional MP3 audio option. It's a great add-on for any concert videos you may want YouTube.

Option 3: Mac

The Mac requires a little more work since it has a few additional steps involved which Windows does not.

Download - You can take care of the downloading and encoding manually.
It's nice and easy on the Mac. In Safari, open the Activity window after starting the playback in YouTube, and double-click the downloading video file. It will have a "get_video?video_id" code in the line. That should start a download in Safari to the default location of your hard drive.

Encode - The best free iPod encoder for the Mac is the iSquint program.

Download the program, drag the downloaded video file in, choose the presets you want, and hit "Start."

"Optimize for iPod" will encode the video at 320-by-240 resolution, which fits the iPod screen near perfectly.

"Optimize for TV" encodes at 640-by-480, which is best for viewing on a television screen using the iPod's TV output port.

However, since YouTube runs most files at 320-by-240, you're not going to improve the output by encoding at 640-by-48o. The file will just take up wasted space.

Your iPod can accept one of two video formats, H.264 and MPEG-4. The former lets you get more video onto your iPod, but will have longer encoding time.