Importing Your Personal Videos into iTunes

You can play videos that you've made, yourself, on your iPod or iPhone (or even Applie TV.) But first, you must import the video file into iTunes. Simply drag it into the iTunes window or over the iTunes icon, or choose File→Add File to Library.

After you add your video to your iTunes library, you can play it just like the videos you buy from the iTunes Store.

iTunes accepts a number of different video file formats, including QuickTime MOV and MPG files as well as files in the MPEG-4 format, including MPEG-4 files encoded with the improved H.264 compression standard. These are typical export options in a number of video-editing programs. H.264, also known as MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), offers significantly greater compression than the current MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) standard, and provides near-DVD quality at less than 1 megabit per second, which makes it useful for wireless Internet connections, iPods, and iPhones.

The QuickTime video technology includes a collection of digital video file formats that offer many choices for quality, compression, picture size, and playback format. Because iTunes uses QuickTime, it can play video formats that some iPods won’t, such as AVI files, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, and even MPEG-4 videos in which the aspect ratio or bit rate isn’t compatible with fifth-generation iPods that play video. iTunes won’t transfer such videos to these iPods — it skips them during the synchronization process.