HOW-TO: Play “movies” on an iPod PhotoPosted Nov 9, 2004, 1:40 PM ET by Phillip TorroneRelated entries: Features, Portable Audio, Portable VideoWe picked up an iPod Photo the other day, and most observers have asked us “Can that thing play movies?” The short answer is no, only music and photos—but the longer answer is “sorta, but not really anything worth calling a movie”. In this week’s how-to we’ll show you how to “play” a movie on an iPod Photo by exporting frames of a movie, importing them to the iPod and playing them manually by click-wheeling through thousands of images, or even viewing 3d views of objects. Pointless? Yes. Will a lot of people try this and put movie trailers and porn on their iPod Photo? You betcha, and as always, we’re here to help.Getting startedAll you’ll need for this is QuickTime Pro, iTunes, and an iPod photo— the same instructions work on both the Mac and PC side. For our examples we’re going to show both the PC and the Mac steps.Getting a movieJust about any QuickTime movie will do, for our example we’re going to use the Star Wars trailer for Episode III. We found one here via Waxy.org. You can right click (PC) or control click (Mac) to download the movie to your local system.Once downloaded, open the movie in QuickTime. You might have other applications that can export sound and frames, if so, feel free to use those.Exporting the soundFirst, we’re going to export the sound. Once exported we’ll add it to the iPod Photo so we can listen to the sound track as we play the movie.On a PC, with the movie open, click File > Export. Choose Movie to WAV, click options and choose. 44kHz, 16 bit, Stereo.On a Mac, with the movie open, click File > Export. Choose Movie to AIFF, click options and choose the same settings.Import the sound in to iTunes, you can export them to the iPod now, or later, it doesn’t really matter.If you don’t want to try and export the sound and try to sync it as you play, that’s fine too. H. M. Warner said it best—”Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”.Exporting the movie to an image sequenceNow that the sound is out of the movie, it’s time to export each frame. The frame rate of the movie we downloaded was 15 frames per second, we’ll export the same in QuickTimeOn a PC, with the movie open, click File > Export. Choose JPEG, type 15 for frames per second and click options. We select medium for quality, but feel free to experiment.On a Mac, with the movie open, click File > Export. Choose Export Image Sequence and also select the same options as we did in the PC example.We exported these to a new folder to keep them all tidy and one spot.When you’re finished, the 1 minute, 47 second movie exports to 1,616 frames (107 frames x 15.1 frames per second = 1,616). This might take awhile, so set it to export and get comfy.On a Mac QuickTime gave us 1,626…...and on a PC 1,616 not sure why, but there it is.Transferring the photo sequence to the iPod photoNow that we have 1,616 photos, we’ll use the new feature(s) in iTunes to sync the photos over the iPod photo. For more information go tohttp://www.engadget.com/entry/3756421320807387/