[kill bill]

i've got a few moves on my ipod but some of them don't fully show up on the screen. is there a way to resize the videos in itunes or do i need to go through and do each of them in isquint?

Also, when i download a video in avi format and convert it to mp4 isquint, i lose a lot of quality. When i bump up the quality slider, i wind up with a file much bigger than what i started with. Does this have to do with a difference in file format or is there a way to maintain the quality (and size)?

[analogika]

Think of transcoding as making a color copy of a black & white xerox.

You can push the quality as high as possible on the color copy, to minimize losses, which drives up the price tremendously, but it will always be noticeably worse than the "original" black and white xerox, and no matter what you do, you'll never be able to overcome the loss of information incurred by the first copying process.

In addition, the color copier is probably good at certain things that the b&w copier sucks at, and vice versa - but in the end, you'll always have the WORST of BOTH processes, compounded.

[mduell]

To add to what analogika said, it's even harder to preserve quality when you're starting with a very low quality source (most downloaded avis) because the encoder tries to reproduce all of the defects in the input.

Start with a quality source (like a DVD) and the results from iSquint will be much better (small and good looking).