I’m not sure if this is something new, or if it has been around for quite some time, but I just stumbled on it today so I thought I would pass the information along to you guys. Did you know that you can click on the podcast episode and convert the format in iTunes? Did you know that you can do it for video? Essentially, you just have to click on the video you want to convert, and right click create AppleTV version, and then you let it do its magic. iTunes then converts the file and puts it into your “Movies” section. I’m not sure why they stick it in there, and not beside your other episodes from the podcast, but it’s better then nothing I guess. It converts the movie to an MPEG-4 instead of a Quicktime movie which was a little surprising. It also cuts the size of the file in half, and changes the resolution from 720p to 934×540.
It’s super handy, but I wish it would keep the file with the rest of them. It would make various resolutions of videocasts available for the iPod alot simpler, and syncing to your iPhone or iPod a breeze if you wanted to watch some HD content on the go.
Note: if you click on the Advanced menu option in iTunes you have the ability to create an iPhone/iPod version as well.
