HOW TO: Convert Videos for Your iPhone (or Any Mobile Device)

Video on devices like the iPod, iTouch and iPhone look great because of their MPEG-4 H.264 format. The good news is that there are tons of videos that you can purchase from the iTunes store, but the bad news is that you’ll go broke in a hurry downloading everything you want. Sure, some of the videos aren’t much ($1.99 each), but the numbers add up really quickly.

Thankfully, there are a slew of sites and software packages that will allow you to convert just about any video format to the H.264 mp4 format that Apple devices require. Here are the best solutions for converting videos online as well as off. Some will convert any video you have on your local computer while others will only convert videos that you find online. In any case, you will wind up with a video file in the correct format for your Apple or other mobile device.

Sites & Software

ConvertTube is a free service that converts online videos to several formats including the MP4 format that you need for Apple devices. Simply paste the video URL from sites like
YouTube,
Google video,
MetaCafe, etc. and select the desired output format.

While the service is extremely simple to use, it must be mentioned that it can take an eternity sometimes for this service to convert even the smallest video. Sometimes it just times out or fails without any explanations. Still, most of the time it will do the trick if you want to do a quick conversion or two. For more than a handful, you’ll be better off with another solution that handles batch processing.

VideoDownloader is similar to ConvertTube except it doesn’t provide you with any output options. What you see is what you get when you download the video from the services they support: YouTube, Google, BlipTV, DailyMotion and a few others. So, if you can’t download the video .mp4 format, you’ll have to convert it with another separate utility which isn’t a big deal or expense.

Movavi Online Convert is another online video converter that provides the unique ability to download and convert up to five different online videos as one video. You can add all of the URLs and the service will send you an email with a link to download when it’s done. It could take a long time, so it’s not good if you’re in a hurry.

Videora offers an
impressive suite of tools for converting and editing videos for free. The video files can be avi, divx, xvid, flv, x264, vob, mpeg, DVDs, YouTube, etc. Any of these videos can be converted into the proper video formats (MPEG-4, H.264) that play on the iPhone 3G.

Here’s Videora’s
Video Converter for the 3G iPhone, which does an excellent job changing existing formats of videos you own into the MPEG-4 H.264 format. Their other converters will do the same trick for other devices such as the iPod, nano, Tivo, Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), Xbox360 and more.

There are many options when you’re converting your videos for your iPhone. Obviously, the better the quality, the larger the file size. Ultimately it’s a personal decision everyone has to make on what’s more important: space on your iPhone or audio/video quality. Personally, I prefer to stick with the highest quality video and audio because the experience is so worth it. You just have to pick and choose which videos you want to keep on your iPhone. If you have the 8 GB then perhaps you should compromise a little and choose medium or high levels of quality for video and audio. Play around and see which results you like best.

HOW TO: Convert Videos for Your iPhone (or Any Mobile Device)