As soon as I bought my new video iPod I began thinking about a way to syncronize my SageTV media library with the iPod. I wanted all my SageTV content to become automatically available in an organized fashion on my iPod. Everytime I docked my iPod, I wanted all my SageTV content to be syncronized onto my iPod.

For those who don't know what SageTV is, its very similar to Tivo, but it is Windows-based software. Like Tivo, you can setup recording schedules and favorites. It stores all recorded shows as MPEG2 files in an easily accessible directory. Because Apple decided to limit the video codecs supported by the new iPod to MP4 and h264, the SageTV content must be transcoded before it can be transferred to the iPod. Also, while your transcoding, you may as well adjust the framerate and video size such that it is appropriate for the iPod as well. Finally, SageTV stores an xml file with each recorded show that contains show info. In order to properly organize the TV shows in iTunes and on the iPod, this show info must be read and added to the tag information when the video is imported into iTunes. Once all that is done, your golden.