My dead ipod video. What a drag...

So last night my 60gig ipod was not really syncing correctly. It was sort of disconnecting or something while files were transfering. As I was getting ready to eject the ipod a little bubble window popped up from the task bar and said ipod.exe is corrupt run chkdsk.

Today I connected to add a few songs, about five, I think. During the update the apple logo appeared. I tried again and it seemed to work. seconds later another little bubble window popped up like last night but it was some crazy file name like lza3.aac is corrupt, run chkdsk. The apple logo apears again and then itunes says Updating iPod... but this time it has almost 400 songs to update. I cancelled because I figured something was wrong and it was more likely to get worse while transferring that much data.

I disconnect and look at the song list to find my ipod is empty. Okay, something has gone wrong. I do a reset. Look again... empty.

I connect the ipod to the computer and itunes pops up a window like it's the first time I am connecting. I cancel out convinced something was more wrong than right.

I decide that updating/reformatting the ipod is probably in order. I launch the updater and select format. About 30 seconds later (and not looking like much was happening) it said, "Firmware Update Failure"

When I power it up I see a little folder with and exclamation point and the apple ipod support address.

I think I can get into disk mode but I can't do anything with it and it says the drive is not formatted. I have tried to format it but it just says "Unable to format".

So it's dead, right? Too bad. It lasted almost a week and a half. I won a goldfish at a carnival when I was a kid and it lasted about that long. I thought that was pretty good when I was six. My expectaiotns have grown with age. I think I might try to get a refund. Never too impressed with the apple idea about how I should use something. We'll see. I just figured out how to make decent looking video conversions too. Bummed.

 

I'm sorry to hear that your iPod does not work and unfortunately I do not know how to help. But I have one question... What do you have to do to get decent video conversions? Like what software are you using and what settings are you using?

 

Probably searching for posts under my name will give you a feel for what I have been through. In short...

I use the cuccusoft suite. After so much frustration and reading that someone on this forum was converting directly from DVD I decided to uninstall ALL the software I have installed in my attempts to get video on my ipod. I reinstalled the cucusoft suite and tried a DVD conversion of a problem movie (Star Wars A New Hope). It worked without a hitch. I knew from my earlier attempts with an extracted VOB that the framerate was 23.975. I set the input accordingly and both the video and audio look and sound great.

With a movie like Star Wars there is much overdubbing of voices so sync is a little hard to judge. Furthermore the tiny screen mixed with amazingly full audio is slightly disorienting. I find the sync to be realistic and the video to be excellent. I have done several other movies since and all have been fine. I have video editing software that can tell me the framerates of movies before I start so I guess that's an advantage.

I have been through the ringer with this ipod video thing. Pretty much the whole deal has been on my own. The first post I ever made here that Lethal guy called me out as being full of self pitty. From that point on I never received one single meaningful suggestion from anyone. I have continually posted in hopes that someone would come along with an idea or that my experiences would have some meaning to someone else.

I suspect the myriad of software created some kind of mismatch/overwrite that created a conflict. In any case I have only installed cucusoft and it works great for converting DVD's. A new version was released yesterday that might solve the problems I have been having with mpegs and VOB's being converted from my hard drive. I have been communicating with cucusoft on this matter. I will not be able to try these until I exchange my paperweight for one that has more uses.

On another note, for 4:3 movies I have to say that 3gp converter is an excellent if less than slick program. Drop an mpeg on it and it spits out a perfectly playable video for your ipod. It's pretty quick too. Do some searches and you can find it. My future will probably involve cucusoft, dvd decrypter, and 3gp conveter. I think all these are useful tools.

In closing I will say this: Not too many on this forum understand video codec's or video in general (never an expectation). I am no expert but from what I have read here the seemingly most knowing are software jockies at best. The main problem that people are having stems from a lack of understanding of video and video codecs. I know enough to understand incompatibility but not enough to be immune to trial an error. It was never my goal to fully understand the video parameters of an ipod but I am much closer after a week and a half than I ever expected.

Frankly, I expected much more from an apple product. I thought the whole point was freeing my creativity to fully explore my experience. Just marketing B$.

good luck.

 

Thanks for the suggestion but windows says something like "The volume is not formatted. Would you like to format it?" so it's dead. This is classic HDD failure.

The ONLY things my ipod will do is show the apple logo and then the folder/exclamation Icon with the web address and enter disk mode. In none of these states will it successfully connect to any apple software. Even windows can only "see" it as a USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE. XP will only format NTFS on such a large volume and I'm not going to do that. In any case I am certain that it has a serious and fatal error either with the firmware or disk. I want a new one or none at all.

After doing hours of searching and reading I have determined that this is a fairly common problem. There a posts everywhere of dead 5Gs that have done the same thing as mine. QC at apple must be a much smaller division than accounting. I'm going to exchange it and try one more. If it acts funny I will just bail on the whole thing and get something else.

 

hi
westrnson i have gone through a ditto problem with my ipod 60gb and after 4hours of work i solved the problem
firstly did you connect your ipod with the pc via usb from a FRONT USB PORT on ur PC casing? if yes then read on, the problem with front usb ports on the pc casing is that the wires/connectors/ or the port itself is of poor quality and when data is transmitted through it at high speed there is data loss or corruption which corrupts ur ipod, i faced this problem and when i fixed my ipod i connected the ipod via usb cable on the motherboards usb ports and it worked flawlessly, even if u used a port on the motherboard i recommend u use a different one this time

secondly go to start, click on run
type:
CMD
and click on ok
command prompt should start up
here type the following
chkdsk C: /f

or chkdsk X: /f

where X is your windows partition
it will tell u checkdisk cannot perform this action as the drive is in use would you like to run it on the next start up,
PRESS "Y" and then enter,
reboot your pc and let the scan disk run fully, it might take a long time depending on your system but don't worry it will work

when the pc restarts, uninstall Itunes, Reinstall itunes, either a latest one from the net or the one that came with the cd, when it asks for a path to install itunes, mostly (C:\program files\itunes)
give it the name of (C:\program files\itunes 2)
do not connect your ipod anytime before this, during or after the itunes setup it will ask u to connect ur ipod to check whether it needs a format or not, at that moment connect your ipod via usb on the port at the back of your pc, choose the format option, it should work, after the format it should ask u to connect the ipod to the wall adapter (charger), do so, the firmware should get reinstalled
if it does not happen, no worries we have a few more options
incase itunes does not ask u to connect an ipod to check whether it needs a format or not then u will have to install itunes on some other pc or a diff copy of windows installed on a diff partition on your pc.

supposing the above did not work
connect your ipod to a power outlet using the ipod power adapter,
toggle the hold switch on and off ( set it to hold, then turn it off again).
press and hold the centre (select) button and the menu buttons for atleast 6 seconds, untill the apple logo appears.
this should reset ur ipod and reinstall the firmware (i think)

please let me know if this works, if you need any instructions again please let me know and i can guide you over msn

btw im from Pakistan, and am running my own forums with some friends, do pay us a visit and post there if you need help, www.wccforums.net

 

sorry my bad, i actually performed this procedure nearly a year ago when i got my photo 60gb, so excuse my mistake, thank you
im hoping to hear from WestrnSon about success or failure (fingers crossed)

 

just a lil' bit of the track.....if anyone in pakistan is checking out ipod or stuff related to it, do visit www.shophive.com

 

well, dude my aim was not to pimp up my website here.....i was just trying to help out people here. As u suggested, i would add the website in the link section.

 

hey man just uninstall iTunes and the ipod software and install again and do a fresh resotre with da ipod softwere and let the ipod charged fully and try adding da songs n stuff!

 

lethal_b please tell me how to out images on my signiture thanx

 

I am VERY sorry about that last post i don't know what i was doin

 

thanx for the tip