Changing resolution of m4v's from iTunes

[raz1337]

I was just talking to a friend that suggested to me since I wasn't using my iPod on my tv, to resize the movies I've bought from iTunes from 640 width down to 320, in an effort to reduce the file sizes of the videos. These videos are all in m4v format. What can I use to do this?

I've done alot of searching on google and other websites, and I can't find much on converting m4v's. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

[Ai Haibara]

M4Vs are actually just MP4s - Apple uses different extensions to differentiate between the streams a little better. (...such as M4A = audio stream, M4B = audiobook, M4P = protected audio stream, as I recall. Though, I may be wrong.)

The primary problem is, however, that since you bought the videos from the iTunes music store, they're encoded with DRM - meaning that you have to get rid of that before you can even think of converting or re-encoding, and I don't think there's anything really available at the moment for videos bought from iTMS.

Of course, converting or re-encoding the videos will mean they'll take a quality hit, too.

[raz1337]

Ahh, my friend said he was using iSquint to do it on his Mac. I guess there isn't something similar for PC's.

[Ai Haibara]

iSquint would probably have the same problem with DRM video from the iTMS. It appears to mainly be a converter for videos into iPod formats. (I haven't tried it on my Mac, because my iPod is an older 4G (no video support), and likewise, I haven't had much reason to buy videos from the iTMS. My sister does have a 5G video iPod, however.)

If you're looking for converters to convert videos to iPod formats, however, there are a number of them for Windows as well as the Mac. On the Windows side, I've tried both SUPER and Videora iPod Converter, and the latter's worked the best for me (though I haven't tried the new 2.x overhauled versions, yet.)

[raz1337]

Yeah, I know of plenty of methods of converting to iPod, but none of them seem to be capable of even opening the itunes movies.