How to put movies on iPod without syncing?

Question

How to put movies on iPod without syncing?

I have a ton of space on my ipod, but not on my computer. How can I put movies on my ipod without taking up space on my computer? I've been able to do that with my music in the past, just drag the song to the iPod section on iTunes, but I can't seem to get it to work for movies, because if I click the box that says "sync movies" to stop syncing it so that I can try to start dragging it manually, it says it will take off the movies I have on there already. Obviously, I don't want that. Help?

iPod classic 160GB (Late 2009)

Posted on Sep 10, 2012 4:45 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,719 points

Sep 10, 2012 5:12 PM in response to rissalittleangel

Four options:

Keep originals of all your content and move the entire iTunes library to an external drive. Keeping the library together as a unit makes subsequent backing up and migration to a new system much easier. Keeping everything in your library means you can easily restore the device when needed.
Relocate part of your library to a secondary drive using the script ConsolidateByMoving. This is ideal if you have a laptop and want, for example, to be able to leave your movies behind on an external drive while still having some or all of your music with when you leave the external behind.
Switch to manual management of your iPod and delete stuff from your library. This means you lose the benefit of being able to manage the device while it isn't connected to iTunes by managing the playlists that sync to it, syncing of ratings & play counts, and makes it much harder to restore the device should the need arise. If you lose your iPod you lose your media too!
You could delete the physical files in the iTunes Media folder but keep the entries in the iTunes database and sync as normal. iTunes will give a warning (which you can disable) that it could not sync the missing files, but it will leave the existing copies on the device. While this works it again makes the process of restoring the device if & when the need arises that much more complicated. If you lose your iPod you lose your media too!

I'd go with option 1 and get another external drive to serve as a backup, but 4 may be what you need to do for now...

If you find you need to copy data back from the iPod at any point see Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device

tt2

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