I’ve been getting enough questions about downloading and converting files that I thought I’d expand my how to get movies video with a tutorial here. A video demonstration is at end of post. The first thing you have to do is download the movie, TV show, music album, software app etc. If you download from the Movies or TV show pages on iPhone4idiots.com then you are downloading a single link mp4 file. This is best for idiots because it is ready to drop into iTunes and sync with your iPod, iTouch or iPhone. However, if you download from a link posted in the Forum or another website, odds are you will not be so lucky! So first off, there are really two main sites to download movies and TV shows – Rapidshare and Megaupload. While there are others, these are the biggest two by far. They pretty much work the same way and you don’t have to pay a thing to use either of them! Megaupload works just like the video I mentioned above shows. Click the Megaupload link and the either the download starts or it ask for a password. Type in the password and you are good to go. When you click on a link that takes you to Rapidshare you will see two buttons – Free user on the left and Premium user on the right. Click on Free user and you should be taken to a screen that has a clock counting down from about 80. After the eighty seconds are up a big circular button appears for you to click on and your download starts. Sometimes Rapidshare will post the following message, “Currently a lot of users are downloading files. Please try again in 2 minutes or become a Premium member.” Just wait the two minutes and try again. Unfortunately, I’ve also seen the link take you to a page stating that you must be a Premium member to download. I never used to see this, but it is becoming more common. This stinks, but is a good reason to stick with sites like iPhone4idiots that don’t do that. Basically, the person that uploaded the file will get paid if you signup to become a Premium user through there link. Another way uploaders try and get paid is by using linkbucks. Linkbucks is highly annoying but harmless. When you click on a linkbucks link you are taken to a page that you must wait 15 seconds to be forwarded onto Megaupload/Rapidshare. There is a link in the upper right you can click on to not have to wait the 15 seconds. However, either way you will surely get at least one pop-up trying to sell you something. Kevin’s money tree is a very common one recently. These pop-ups do not infect your computer with any viruses or spyware. They are safe to use, just annoying. You will find some of these on the older links on our TV shows and Movies pages. However, they are fewer and fewer as all new links are strictly Megaupload. Anyway, so once you download the file you need to check the extension. Again, if you got it from the Movies or TV shows page you are ready to drop your mp4 file into iTunes. If you got it elsewhere odds are it is either avi or rar. We’ll start with rar which like a zip file is just a way to compress the file. Think of it as a box or folder with a file inside it. You need to unrar the box to see what the file is inside. Luckily this is easy to do. Generally, just right click on the file you want to unrar and click extract. If that doesn’t work install WinRAR here. Many times a movie will be broken into multiple smaller files. I don’t like this but its no big deal. Just create a folder on your desktop with the movie name. Download each rar file into that folder. Each file will end with extension part1.rar, part2.rar OR 1.rar, 2.rar and so forth. Once you have all the multiple parts in the folder just right click on the first section/part and choose extract. It will creat a single video file for you. On a mac you can just double click it and it will work. So once its un-rared you will have another file. If you are lucky its mp4, but its likely avi. Not to worry. AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a standard audio / video file format under Windows. The problem is that will not play your iDevice. Luckily, there are tons of free software that will convert the avi to mp4. Just type free video converter into google and pick one. I’ve used Any Video Converter, Free Video Converter, Handbrake and iSquint. Some software has more options than others, but basically the steps are as follows. One, select Add File, Open or drag and drop the avi file into the software. Two, select the output profile. This may be as simple as picking MPEG-4 from a drop down menu or may involve selecting file size and bit rate. The good thing is no matter what you do it will likely work. You may just need to experiment some to find an output that looks good enough for you. Three, make sure you see where the output file is going to be placed. Four, hit Convert/Encode button and it will create an mp4 file in about 5 minutes on average! You are almost done. Now just drag and drop the mp4 file into iTunes and follow the instructions in the how to get movie video. Please feel free to ask questions in Forum if you are having any issues. It’s really pretty simple. Just read the article and watch the video again if you are having problems. Also, for more advanced users, please feel free to post in Forum about converting mkv files.