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Now it's time to connect your portable device and setup auto synchronization.

If you've never connected your portable device to setup auto synchronization, WMP10 will automatically prompt you to set up a profile. If you previously connected the device, you'll need to manually launch the wizard by clicking the Display properties and settings button.

Click the Settings button to launch the Auto sync device setup.

Choose Automatic and check the box next to Customize the playlists that will be synchronized.

Scroll through the list of available playlists until you find the Podcasts playlist. Check the box next to Podcasts and click Finish.

Depending on the available space on your device, you may want to let WMP10 optimize the files during the transfer process. This is particularly important if a variable bit rate file was used for the channel programming, because many players don't support variable bit rate files.

At this point, WMP10 will automatically transfer audio to your portable media player. Each time you connect the device, WMP10 will compare the content on the device to the content on the playlist and automatically keep the files in sync.

Back to the Beginning

Open Windows Media Player 10.

Open Tools > Options and click the Library tab.

Click the Monitor Folders button, then click the Add button to browse to Program Files\iPodder\downloads. Click OK to add this folder to the WMP10 watch list. Keep clicking OK until you have closed the Options window.

Click on the Library tab, right-click the Auto Playlists header and choose New from the menu. This launches the Auto Playlist wizard.

Name your playlist.

Click the link to add criteria below Music in my Library. Create an auto playlist that includes the following by selecting More for the list of criteria.

File Name Contains :\Program Files\iPodder\downloads

That parameter automatically adds everything in the downloads folder (and sub-folders) to your Podcasts playlist. If you want to transfer all the content, you can stop right here and skip to Syncing To Your Portable Media Player. If you subscribe to more than one or two programs, your playlist will rapidly grow out of control.

Use this parameter to keep content fresh with the daily audio programming:

Date added To Library Is After Yesterday

The Auto Playlist only includes content downloaded on the current date. You can extend this a little bit by changing the parameter to Is After Last 7 Days.

Sync A Podcast to Your Portable Media Player

Download and install the iPodder app for Windows.

Visit the iPodder.org Podcasts page to subscribe to content. At this point you'll need to copy and past a URL into the iPodder app.

Click the Check for new podcasts button to automatically download newly subscribed content.

You can set iPodder to automatically check for new audio to automate the process. I set mine to check every 12 hours, because most of the sites aren't updating content more frequently and I'm too lazy to pick specific times.

Until you want to subscribe to more channels, that's the last time you'll need to touch iPodder. Keep the app running in your system tray and it will dutifully download new programs as they are posted.

Creating a Podcast Playlist

Podcasting makes time shifting downloadable audio or video a piece of cake, as long as you have the right tools. At the most basic level, you subscribe to a broadcast channel using iPodder, which watches for updates to the channel and automatically downloads new files to your PC or Mac.

At the moment, full automation of the process is the process is possible only when using iPodder in combination with Mac OS X, iTunes, and an iPod. In the Mac OS X scenario, iPodder not only downloads new content, it automatically transfers the content to an iPod connected to the Mac. iPod owners connecting via Windows get automatic downloads, automatic population of the content in iTunes, but must manually initiate the transfer from PC to iPod.

If you don't have an iPod (which probably means you also aren't using iTunes), the auto-download still works, but there's no interaction with Windows Media Player at this point, and there's no automated transfer of content to any non-iPod portable device.

With millions of devices able to receive audio content automatically through Windows Media Player. (Pocket PC, Rio Karma, Creative MuVo, Creative Zen PMC and Dell DJ are just the devices I own that fit this description), it's only a matter of time before we see an iPodder client with software media player independence. In the meantime, using the autoplaylist feature of Windows Media Player 10, combined with Auto-synchronization is an easy hack for streamlining the process. In fact, this hack is more fully automatic than the Windows/iTunes/iPod solution.

Receiving A Podcast on a PC

Converting from AVI to WMV

When FlasKMPEG is done, playback the file in Windows Media Player to make sure the audio and video look and sound okay.

Launch Windows Media Encoder

Start > All Programs > Windows Media > Windows Media Encoder

Choose Custom session from the wizard options.

Click File button in the Source From: options and browse to the location where you had FlasK output the AVI file.

On the Output tab, uncheck the box next to Pull from encoder and check the box next to Encode to file. Choose a location and name for the output file.

On the Compression tab, click the Edit button.

Click Import and browse to the location of the profile you created, then click OK.

Check the box next to Two-pass encoding for optimal output. Encoder uses the first pass to examine the file and the second pass to actually encode it, allowing it to create the best possible output.

At this point, you can optionally click the Attributes tab to enter Title, Author, Copyright, Rating, and Description info about your video, or you can simply click Vobtowmv15.gif to get the encode process rolling.

When Windows Media Encoder is finished, your video file is ready for transfer to a SD or Compact Flash card for Pocket PC devices or to sync to your Portable Media Center.

Back to Part 1 | Back to Part 2

Creating the WMV output profile

If you don't already have it installed on your system, download Windows Media Encoder and install it.

While the video is converting, launch the Windows Media Profile Editor to create an output profile for the WMV file you will create using the AVI.

Start > All Programs > Windows Media > Utilities > Windows Media Profile Editor

Add a name, describe the profile, check the boxes next to Audio and Video, accepting the defaults, and then click the Add button.

Type 800K in the box. This is the maximum threshold supported by Portable Media Center devices and is a good benchmark to hit for Pocket PC devices.

For the audio, choose 64 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo CBR

Video settings should match the screenshot below for optimum results.

Back to Part 1 | Read Part 3

This tutorial demonstrates how to convert VOB files ripped from a DVD to a WMV format usable on both Pocket PC and Portable Media Center devices. After trying several out of the box solutions (most notably DVDtoPocketPC, which may or may not be deemed illegal at some point), I came up with a formula that produces smoother motion at reasonable file sizes, using a custom Windows Media Encoder profile and some open source tools.

There are plenty of applications available on the Internet for ripping DVDs and putting them on your hard drive. Many of these tools are illegal in the United States and other countries because they use technologies designed to defeat CSS and Macrovision protection. There are also plenty of legal reasons for ripping DVDs, like making training videos available for streaming on a corporate network, converting movies you burned to DVD back to a format available for use on a PC, or sharing material you own the copyright to in a different format.

Rather than making this tutorial a pointless exercise in what should be legal versus what is currently legal, I'm going to assume going into this that you've done your homework on getting video files off of a DVD and are now interested in being able to use those files for some other purpose. If you haven't, do a quick Google search for DVD Ripping and come back when you have the VOB files on your hard drive.

Software Required:

FlasKMPEG to convert VOB files to AVI
Windows Media Encoder to convert AVI files to WMV

Since most DVD ripping tools break large DVD files into several smaller VOB chunks, I'm currently using FlasKMPEG version 0.78.39, which automatically recombines all the VOB files to form a complete movie during the VOB to AVI conversion process. The disadvantage to version 0.78.39 is it doesn't use an installer, so everything lives in the folder you unzipped it to.

After launching FlasKMPEG by clicking on the .exe, open your video file from the File > Open menu.

At this point in the process we will output the highest quality AVI file possible, so we will keep the video the same aspect ratio as the original.

Go to Options > Advanced Options to configure settings for the AVI file.

On the video tab make sure Don't resize is checked. Check Perform dual pass encoding, which takes slightly longer but results in a better quality video file. Leave the output framerate and video structure set on the defaults.

Click the Audio tab and choose Decode Audio and 44100 Hz.

Leave the default settings on the Post Processing tab.

On the files tab, name the file and choose a location to save the output Click OK when you are finished.

From the select output button, make sure the AVI Output option is selected. Click Configure Output Module to choose the audio and video codecs used to process the AVI output.

My best success is using the Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V1 for video and << Uncompressed PCM Audio >> for the audio codec. Accepting the defaults seems to produce great video for me. At this point, FlasKMPEG will process the VOB files and output an AVI file. Plan on processing time to be approximately as long as the playtime of video file you are converting.

Click Save and Close when you are finished.

Part 1 | Part 3