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Something hit me when I watched the ‘Let’s Rock’ keynote last month. The iPod Nano-chromatic is desirable, and I mean desirable. Apple have once again shipped something that has made me ‘want one’ even though I blatantly don’t need one. These new Nano’s are probably the nicest looking iPod’s ever made in my opinion. I own an iPhone 3G, 30GB iPod Video and a 1GB 2nd-gen Nano, so it’s fair to say I have absolutely no need for a new Nano. But… that doesn’t stop me drooling over them whenever I see the advert on TV. It’s as much a sign of Apple’s marketing prowess as it is their great product design, little details like Album Art matching the colour of the iPod, the way they melt down your TV screen like something that’s almost crying out for you to ‘buy me’. These things are most definietly HOT for this season.

Nano-chromatic is hot for this fall

If you are like me and want your Movies and TV Shows to look good on your AppleTV, but also want them to play on your iPod or iPhone, then here is a guide to how I rip my DVD’s. Since the latest version of Handbrake you can also include 5.1 surround sound in your files and they will still play on your iPod or iPhone! Now I will show you how to get great rips, but still maintain compatability.

1. Download and install Handbrake software.
2. Insert your chosen DVD, if Apple DVD Player opens, just wait for it to load the film then quit.
3. Start Handbrake, it will ask you to choose a Source, choose your newly mounted DVD
4. Handbrake will now scan the DVD and nine times out of ten it will find the film for you, just check the ‘Title’ section to make sure it has picked up the film. You will be able to tell from the time.
   

   Make sure you choose the correct Title

    

5. Once you have done that now you need to choose a preset from the panel on the right hand side. If you can see the panel click the ‘Toggle Presets’ button in the top right of the app.
6. Now you need to choose iPod High-Rez, this will produce the highest quality file the iPod and iPhone can play.  
   

   Choose iPod High-Rez

    

7. Notice how Handbrake automatically puts a tick in the ‘Insert iPod Atom’ this ensures compatibility with the 5G and 5.5G iPod’s if the horizontal resolution exceeds 320 pixels.
8. Next you need to tweak the rip a bit by choosing ’2-pass encoding’. This will make the encode take roughly twice as long but it is well worth it for the detail it retains, and also helps colour reproduction slightly.
9. If you want the film to play in 5.1 through your AppleTV and Amp then select ‘AVC/H.264 Video / AAC + AC3 Audio’    
   

   Get 5.1 audio in your Handbrake rips

    

10. Now all that’s left to do is to hit the Start button and wait for your film to be encoded.
11. Once done, drag it from the Desktop and into iTunes, iTunes will make a copy of it so you can then delete it off the Desktop. Once iTunes has processed it you can then rename it and add details such as Name, Year, Genre and now thanks to iTunes 8.0, you can add a Description.

iTunes 8.0 was released just after Apple’s latest Special Event, ‘Let’s Rock’ on September 9th. The biggest new feature of this new version was the ability to create ‘Genius’ playlists. Genius playlist’s automatically create a playlist of either 25, 50, 75 or 100 songs that group similar songs together for you. Genius uses different factors such as Genre, Play Count, Rating, Year, Artist and also information from other iTunes users via the online Genius ‘Cloud’, to try and create a great sounding playlist for you. This works very well to be fair to Apple.

Genius playlists are new to iTunes 8.0

Not only does this feature work in iTunes but it also works on your iPhone (with 2.1 update) and on the newest iPod’s (Touch, Nano-chromatic and Classic 120GB). Although the feature on these devices does not seem to connect to the Genius ‘Cloud’ to aid the process, it still works great. It’s an ideal alternative to creating your own ‘On the Go’ playlist, as it’s less time consuming and, if you’re anything like me, I take an age to make up my own playlist!

One of the ways I think Apple could improve the feature even more is to add an option to create a Genius playlist that will fit onto an 80-min CD-R. I created a 25 song playlist the other day and found myself removing 6 or 7 songs to get it to fit on a CD I was making to listen to in the Car. How cool would it be if you could just choose ‘Create CD’ from the drop-down list. So if you’re listening Apple…..