Why is it so hard!....

You've all heard it a million times, I'm sure... "I don't know how to do it, I don't know what format to use" We have a crew of people in Oxford that make vodcasts for people to download / subscribe to via iTunes etc... they've been making these for a year or more and STILL the files they make to be linked to do not work on an iPod... Err, OK, given that most of the world use iPods to listen to iTunes syndicated content, you'd suggest that this would be the top priority for them, right?

A quick google search for those of you that have no clue what formats an iPod / Phone will play, returns these details...

* H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Low-Complexity version of the Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

* H.264 video, up to 768 kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

* MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

And, if you encode to these standards, it "just works" there is also a plethora of information on this topic... Still, I get sent details to webservers with spaces in the file names, spaces in the path to the file and then, when all that is fixed, the wrongly encoded content.

It gets boring!