iPod with Video Conversion Software Updated--Free iSquint Joins Pack

We recently posted a speed shootout among MoviePod 1.0, Podner 1.1.1 and Video2Pod 1.1.1. MoviePod won but the other two developers are not standing still and have upgraded their offerings:

Podner 1.2 -- "...a 10-50% speed increase - along with a tendency to make iPod®-compatible H.264 files when QuickTime® Pro can't. MPEG-4 quality is vastly improved while file size has been reduced..."

Video2Pod 1.2.1 -- "Problems with muxed mpeg1 videos fixed, conversion speed of such videos is much faster now."

MoviePod remains a v1.0 and all three applications sell for about $10 each.

There's a new video iPod file conversion application out as well, iSquint v0.9k, and it is freeware. According to the developer,

"iSquint is an iPod video conversion app. It's up to 5 times faster than Apple's method, works well with AVIs and MPEGs, and is infinitely free-er....On a 1.5GHz G4, iSquint can convert most video files to iPod-screen-sized videos in realtime. Depending on a few factors, a 20 minute video will take up anywhere from 50-150MB of disk space."

Unfortunately, iSquint does not support H.264 nor .wmv9 files without Flip4Mac just yet. [Bill Fox]