If you have an iPhone you've most likely noticed that iTunes has a feature for managing TV-Shows and sync them to iPhone/iPod. But what if none of the shows they offer on iTunes Store satisfy your needs? What if you're(like me) not in USA and thus don't have access to the TV-Show section of iTunes Store? What if you want to watch your own series? Then follow this tutorial on how to jack iTunes to play your episodes.

This is completely safe and has 100% guaranteed no negative consequences - except possibly that you'll be watching too much and either burning your battery away or having too fun to focus on your work/school. But that's not really your iPhone's fault, right?

Also, yes it is possible to convert files right in iTunes, but the quality for those files are something of a catastrophe.

This may seem like a lot of steps, but it is actually quite easy and goes quickly when you've learned it. I'm just describing in great detail how you do, which makes it take up a lot of space.

Contents 1 What you need 2 How to do 2.1 Step 1: Convert 2.2 Step 2: Rename 2.3 Step 3: Jack the TV-Show Feature 2.4 Optional Extra Step: Adding New Episodes

What you needEdit

• An iPhone/iPod Touch(it's possible with some other devices like 5th Gen iPod Nano as well, but the conversion differ for those)
• iTunes set up to sync with the device from step #1
• For conversion you can use for exampleiSquint for mac, and Handbrake that works on both Windows and Mac. Actually, anything that lets you export to MPEG4 with custom screen resolutions will work. Choose a converter you like - I've just recommended some of the fastest and most stable free ones.
• A few episodes of your series of choice in a format your conversion application can read
• Time and Patience
• A Logo/Cover/Whatever of your series (Optional, but it will make your TV-Show Catalog look nicer)

How to doEdit

Step 1: ConvertEdit

If you already have episodes in iPhone- or PSP-sized resolution(yes, the iPhone can read MP4 files meant for PSP too), you can skip this step. You should first check to see if you can find the episodes in iPhone/PSP-resized files first since conversion takes a lot of time. For Animes, you can check Anime4PSP and see if they has it. For other series, Google them.

• Download a few episodes to your hard drive. I don't care how you got them, but they need to be in a format that your converter can read.
• Open an episode in your converter
• If you use iSquint like I suggested, you can just drop the files in the iSquint window, check the iPod checkbox and set the quality to Normal(higher qualitites will hardly make any difference and will take more time to convert, while lower qualities will actually be a visible difference), have iSquint put them somewhere and click start. WARNING! IMPORTANT! DON'T CLICK THE IMPORT TO iTUNES BUTTON!
• If you don't you have to manually set the resolution to 480x272, limit the bitrate to 1400kbps, set sound codec to MPEG-4 AAC and the video codec to MPEG-4 H.264. If you use an application like Handbrake it may include presets for iPhone, in that case, just check that preset.

Step 2: RenameEdit

When you have an MP4 file from the last step or download, you need to make it an iTunes Videofile and number the episodes. Do this by changing the extension from ".mp4" to ".m4v". You will also need to put some kind of episode number in the name, such as "Episode 1.m4v" or "Toradora - 1.m4v" or something, but since this is just so you can find the files yourself it's not 100% necessary if you don't mind a cluttered library...

Step 3: Jack the TV-Show FeatureEdit

Now that you have M4V files, you just need to dump them into the TV-Show category and sync them over.

• Import the files into iTunes. You should use the "File->Import..." command and not opening them directly, since if you open them directly iTunes will start playing them
• Make sure all of the episodes has filled blue dots beside them, if some don't, then select them, left-click on them and choose "Mark as not seen". If you let them be un-marked they won't be synced.
• Select the first episode and open the Info dialogue by pressing "Command+I" on Mac and "Control+I" on Windows, or right-clicking on the selected file and choosing Show Info
• On the Video tab, fill in "Episode number" with the episode number, press the "Next" button and repeat for all episodes. Close the Info Dialog.
• Select all the episodes at the same time by making sure all the episodes are grouped together in the list(if they're not, click the Name column to make the episodes sort by name), select the first episode and holding down shift while clicking the last one, then open the Info dialog again. If it warns you about editing multiple files, press OK.
• On the Video tab, fill in Series Name and Season(set Season to 1 if there's only one), optionally placing the cover/logo/whatever you have in the picture material field, and on the Options tab and choose "Media Type -> TV-Show"
• After it has worked for a few seconds, click the TV-Shows category in the main menu. Voilla! The series you've created will be here! Just sync and it will be copied over(by default it will only copy un-seen episodes and remove seen episodes with every sync, which is the recommended behavior since it saves space and un-clutters the menus).

Optional Extra Step: Adding New EpisodesEdit

If you're following a series that regularly adds new episodes you may want to copy over new episodes(or you may want to add more episodes for some other reason). To do this you can just convert and import the episode into iTunes, then opening the Info dialog, filling in Series, Episode Number and Season on the Video tab, optionally adding a cover, and setting Type: TV-Show on the Options tab. As long as the Series and Season numbers match, the episode will be added to an existing series.