Hopefully folks here will have some ideas for me on the best way to do what I want to do...

I record LOTS of cartoons for the kids: mainly anime, some other stuff. Recorded with a Hauppauge card off of cable to MPEG2. I've enabled MPEG2 lossless transcoding so I can clip out commercials and save some room. I used to then transcode them to Xvid or Divx using some Windows tools (like Auto GK or Dr. Divx).

I then realized that, if I recorded them to something that was iPod ready, if and when I get a video iPod, it would be a great way to archive the transcoded shows to an external device, have something that could be viewed in the car, AND have something that could be played on a TV set too.

Problems: I played with avidemux (the SVN version, 2.2.something) under Ubuntu 6.06 on a separate machine, and _really_ like its results... I can set two-pass x264 as well as have easy access to a ton of filters (deinterlacing, denoise) that really cleans up the material, plus I can normalize audio (which has been low with my Hauppauge captures for a long time now, even after adjusting audio capture settings).

The problem is, none of the x264 files it creates seem to be acceptable to the iPod (I'm obeying the limitations on resolution and bitrate as far as I know).

I know myth2iPod exists, but then I lose access to the filtering and audio normalization. (I am using R5C7 so I shouldn't run into the problems described on the forum with R5D1.)

I've tried Videora on PC, which seems to work but results are lower-quality. I have access to Macs as well and have used iSquint, which is very simple and makes legal iPod video, but again, no filtering, so lower quality results.

Can anyone recommend a good solution? I'd certainly like to do it under Linux and/or use open source solutions, but since time is money and there are lots of shows to process, if a commercial product can do it, I'm not adverse to buying something.

Thanks.

In my situation, I thought there was a bug in Myth2iPod because wifey's ipod wouldn't play the videos, just the audio. Turns out that since she had never actually downloaded any ipodcasts with video, her menu wasn't set up and they were mis-filed as audio podcasts.
Just a shot in the dark, but make sure this isn't the trouble.

Thanks, I did see that in your thread while searching the forum. No, the x264 files I'm making with avidemux2 are rejected by iTunes and not even sent to the iPod. I did post in the avidemux forums to see what I could do but the reply seemed to indicate that something else needed to be set (something that avidemux2 doesn't do) in order to make it acceptable to an iPod.

http://www.avidemux.org/pun/viewtopic.php?id=2509