Well I said I would come back with news and it is NOT GOOD.
Here's the story....
As per Dark Jello's hint I edited the Conversion Profile I was using in Videora and set the maximum framesize to 320 x 240, which is the biggest option available in the profile editor and is the upper limit the Ipod can handle for H264 files. I saved the edited profile, enabled the console log and started the conversion of my holiday video clip. As the conversion program ran and the Console Log filled out, the Header Section said framesize 320 x 260. WHAT??? AGAIN?? So I aborted the conversion, scratched my skull and headed back to the Red Kawa website to see if I could suss anything out about this glitch. Surprise! They have a new release, version 2.19, and the main difference is:
"2.19 Changelog:
Fixed: AutoResize when Height too Large
Added: More Video Types to VideoWizard
Release Notes: In previous versions the AutoResize function would sometimes create videos with a height larger than the max height of the AutoResize setting. The AutoResize feature has been modified to ensure this no longer happens."
Well waddayaknow, the £$%ers knew about this all along and they still released it on me without a mental health warning. Oh well - at least they've fixed it now....
So I uninstalled Videora V 2.11 and downloaded V 2.19. One sec into the download Firefox gave me an error message. But when I hit "Ignore" everything seemed to progress normally. The install wizard ran fine and I went through the same old routine as described above, as per Dark Jello's suggestion again. And... guess what... The Console Log header section said 320 x 260 AGAIN. Anyway I let the conversion run to completion - three hours for a 23 minute video clip.
And at the end of all this, did Itunes sync my video clip to the Ipod?
Yeah. Sure. Like a hog does Immelmann Turns.
However I suspect Videora may be only partially guilty. Since I have previously succeeded in
- rendering an (other) edited AVI video clip into MPEG
- converting this into .mp4 (H264)
- syncing the mp4 onto my ipod and
- viewing this clip correctly on the ipod....
this leads me to the conlusion that Videora can in fact do the job, given a good input file. I suspect Videora will not generate a syncable file from the one I've been trying with now because of something it doesn't like in the input .mpg file - this may be the rendering program's fault - but neither Videora nor Itunes provide any hint of what the problem actually is (prime suspect: 320 x 260).
Incidentally in all this process I noticed a cute featurette of Itunes: if it cannot sync one of the clips in the Movies library, then any existing movies on the Ipod vanish. iNsult and iNjury.
At this point I throw my hands up in disgust and throw in the sponge - unless anyone has some additional proposal which they are pretty damn confident will work.
please bear in mind the general limits which the iPod carries~
H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320x240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats.
MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480x480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats ..so you may need to reconvert it.
Thank you for the pointer MrXXG. I REALLY have those ipod limits in mind! I lost three evenings messing with Videora and I think the reason is that that package cannot convert my video file correctly to those limits.
I like the sound of Cucusoft and downloaded their ipod video converter package. But when I run the application I get this error message:
" MP4Converter.exe - Entry Point Not Found. The procedure entry point WMCreateWriter could not be located in the dynamic link library WMVCore.dll.OK "
It's that smug-sounding "OK" in error messages that bugs the heck out of me.... Any idea what I can do about it? (the error I mean - aside from calling in The Gremlin Exorcist of course) I'd really like to try this package out and all this failure is starting to get to me...
Free, downloaded. installed, worked smooth as silk.
First try, no hassle, straight into itunes, stright onto the ipod.
It says it does a load of other TV-related stuff too.
Thank you all for your help.
Over and out for now.
try winavi mp4 converter that works perfectly for me it has a setting for ipod which has never fails, it is incredibly fast and even converts to all other formats
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