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Putting videos on your iPod from YouTube used to be a painful process

One of the best upgrades the iPod ever received was the ability to playback videos. Even though the screen is small, long videos are surprisingly easy to watch on the small screen.

Long movies are great for long trips, but short movies are always fun to have on your iPod as well, whether for showing your friends or just for your own amusement. YouTube (and other video sites) provides a never-ending supply of entertaining short videos.

But downloading videos from YouTube is tough, and iPods are picky about the types of files they’ll play back. These combine to make it a tricky process to bring videos from your Internet browser to your iPod screen. Many programs offer the ability to transfer and convert files simply, but most of them are excessively-complicated, cost money, and/or don’t work very well.

Luckily, there’s a simple two-step solution that’s free, effective, and simple:

Step 1: How to Download Videos from YouTube

Downloading from YouTube used to be a major headache, but it’s gotten a lot easier. There are two major ways of downloading videos:

1. Video Downloader: Simply copy and paste the link to the YouTube video and hit “Download” and the video will be downloaded to your computer.
2. Video DownloadHelper FireFox extension: If you’re using the browser FireFox, then this extension is very handy. Once it’s installed, simply load up any video in your browser, go into the “Tools” menu, then the “DownloadHelper” submenu. Go to the “Media” submenu and choose your file. While the video is loading, there will be two files — one with the YouTube icon, and another one that has the title plus “.flv” at the end. I don’t believe it makes a difference, but typically I pick the one with the YouTube icon.

Both of these methods work for most other popular video sites as well.

Step 2: How to Convert Videos for your iPod

Now that you have your video file, you have to convert it to a format that the iPod can playback. The format is somewhat obscure, definitely not the friendly wmv, avi, or mpeg. iPods playback .mp4s.

The best program I know of for simple conversions into this format is Videora iPod Converter. The program is very straight-forward and simple, taking you step-by-step through the conversion process. It’s not versatile, since it’s designed just for converting into an iPod-friendly format, but it does the job quickly and easily. And, it’s completely free.

After converting your video, the video will automatically be added into your iTunes library. Just plug in your iPod, make sure your settings are set, and, ta-da! Video on your iPod! Not so bad after all, was it?

Technorati Tags: youtube, ipod, videos