Introduction
The iPhone has been a fantastic companion for me on long trips; it gives me plenty of options to kill some time. Although most of the time I play games and listen to music, the large screen also makes it tempting to watch a movie or two. But getting movie files set up to play on the iPhone is not all that straight forward till you know what you’re doing.
I tried a couple of free video converting tools but I wasn’t satisfied with the output. There was some quality loss after converting the files. Moreover, the applications had too many different setting to customize the output. They were too technical for me. I didn’t know what I was doing so I ended up with stretched videos, audio not matching the video etc. So I went in search of something a little more simple and found DVDVideoSoft Free Studio Managers suite, who make about 20 different free convertor tools, one of which is their Free Video to iPhone Converter.  The program has a very simple and self explanatory interface with all the options in a single window. The application has only two functions, an option to convert your files to MP4 format and an option to trim your videos. The application can convert files with the extensions of *.avi, *.mpg, *.mpeg, *.mpe, *.wmv, *.asf, *.mov, *.qt, *.3gp, *.3g2, *.flv or *swf. 
You can download a free copy from www.dvdvideosoft.com. The program works on Windows and Mac OS.
To Convert a Video
To convert a video, just drag and drop the video from Windows Explorer into the application or click the Browse button on the right and find the file on your hard drive and add the file. Then click on Browse (under the output folder) to choose the location where you would like to save your converted video files. After selecting the destination you have an option to change the file name of the converted file by clicking the output name tab. This prevents overwriting of the existing file and makes it easier to identify the new file from the original. The application has three preconfigured profiles to choose from.
1. iPhone High Quality (MPEG4, 30fps, 480X320, AAC- 192Kbit)
2. iPhone Standard Quality (MPEG4, 24fps, 480X320, AAC- 128Kbit)
3. iPhone Economy Quality (MPEG4, 15fps, 240X160, AAC- 64Kbit) 
Click Convert to start the process. The application will prompt you to set the priority level for the conversion process. There are five different priority levels. If you still want to use your computer for other tasks, convert the files in low priority. When high priority is given the application utilizes the complete virtual memory of the machine, making other processes to slow down.
Note: Opting for high quality will significantly boost the video quality as well as the file size. For example I converted a 680MB file to MPEG4 format in High quality. The converted file was about 980MB.
The conversion time depends on the file size and profile you have chosen. Open iTunes and drag the newly converted video file/s to the library window.
If you want to update the information of the video while transferring it to the iTunes library, select Videos from the left-hand column and go to list view. Click the file, the info of which you want to edit and select Get Info from the File menu. Then edit the boxes found under the Info tab. |