From ArchWiki

Instructions below are listed per generation of iPod. Instructions for one generation, will probably work for others, but there's no guarantee. This information has been placed here for preservation and to be shared.

Contents 1 Gen 5/5.5 1.1 DVD to iPod 1.2 Video file to iPod 2 Avidemux

[edit] Gen 5/5.5

Surprisingly, easily converting video under Linux to an appropriate format for an iPod Video is a bit more difficult than just a google. Took quite a bit of searching to find the solutions listed below.

[edit] DVD to iPod

Use: http://diveintomark.org/public/2007/06/podencoder.txt Depends: aur/gpac mplayer

Has detailed help, and is fairly self explanatory

Mirrored at: http://src.iphitus.org/scripts/podencoder.txt

[edit] Video file to iPod

Use: http://src.iphitus.org/scripts/mp4ize.txt Depends: mplayer

I originally found this script here: http://thomer.com/howtos/ipod_video.html http://thomer.com/howtos/mp4ize It has been modified to properly handle filenames with unusual characters. Thanks to Thomer for the great script.

[edit] Avidemux

Use: pacman -S avidemux Depends: a lot of other things that are grabbed automatically

This can convert to mp4 files. If you enforce a hard max of bitrate @ 700ish and keep the video size to 720x480 or 320x240 than it works fine for video file exporting. Export to ipod with a recent version of gtkpod.