Video Syncing

podkit syncs movies and TV shows from your video collections to iPods that support video playback.

Supported Devices

Not all iPods support video. These models can play video:

iPod Video — 5th and 5.5th generation
iPod Classic — 6th and 7th generation
iPod Nano — 3rd through 5th generation

See Supported Devices for the full compatibility matrix.

Supported Input Formats

Format	Extensions	Notes
Matroska	`.mkv`	Common for rips
MP4	`.mp4`, `.m4v`	May passthrough if already compatible
AVI	`.avi`	Legacy support
MOV	`.mov`	QuickTime
WebM	`.webm`	VP8/VP9 transcoded to H.264
WMV	`.wmv`	Windows Media

All videos are transcoded to iPod-compatible M4V (H.264 video, AAC audio). Files that are already compatible are copied directly without re-encoding. See Video Transcoding for quality presets and device profiles.

Supported Content Types

Content Type	Supported	Notes
Movies	Yes	Standalone films with optional director/studio metadata
TV Shows	Yes	Episodes with series, season, and episode information
Music Videos	Not yet	Planned for a future release
Video Podcasts	Not yet	Planned for a future release

Content Type Detection

podkit automatically determines whether a video is a movie or TV show using (in priority order):

Embedded tags — Episode/season metadata in the file container
Folder structure — Show Name/Season 01/ pattern
Filename patterns — S01E01, 1x01, anime fansub [Group]_Show_EP, etc.
Scene release parsing — Extracts title and year from dot-separated scene release names

If none of these match, the video is treated as a movie.

Recommended Folder Organization

The most reliable approach is the Plex naming standard — podkit extracts the series title from the folder name, so it captures the full show name including any language or region markers.

Movies:

Movies/
├── The Matrix (1999).mkv
├── Inception (2010)/
│   └── Inception.mkv
└── Sci-Fi/
    └── Blade Runner (1982).mkv

TV Shows:

TV Shows/
└── Breaking Bad/
    ├── Season 1/
    │   ├── Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.mkv
    │   └── Breaking Bad - S01E02 - Cat's in the Bag.mkv
    └── Season 2/
        └── Breaking Bad - S02E01 - Seven Thirty-Seven.mkv

Multi-language collections — use a language/region marker in the show folder name to keep versions separate:

Anime/
├── Digimon Adventure (JPN)/
│   └── Season 01/
│       ├── Digimon Adventure - S01E01.mkv
│       └── Digimon Adventure - S01E02.mkv
├── Digimon Adventure (CHN)/
│   └── Season 01/
│       └── Digimon Adventure - S01E01.mp4
└── Digimon Digital Monsters (USA Dub)/
    └── Season 01/
        ├── Digimon Digital Monsters - S01E01.avi
        └── Digimon Digital Monsters - S01E02.avi

The language marker (e.g., (JPN)) is preserved in the series title on the iPod. See Show Language to control how it’s displayed.

Supported Filename Patterns

podkit recognizes several naming conventions commonly used by media libraries, scene releases, and anime fansub groups.

Standard TV patterns

Pattern	Example
`SxxExx`	`Show.S01E01.720p.mkv`
`sxxexx` (lowercase)	`show.s01e05.mkv`
`NxNN`	`Show.1x01.mkv`
`Season X Episode Y`	`Show - Season 1 Episode 1.mp4`
Plex style	`Show Name - S01E01 - Episode Title.mkv`

Anime fansub patterns

Fansub releases use a distinct naming convention with the group name in brackets and a standalone episode number:

Pattern	Example
`[Group]_Show_EP_(codec)_[CRC]`	`[RyRo]_Digimon_Adventure_15_(h264)_[8FBCA82D].mkv`
`[Group] Show - EP [CRC]`	`[SubGroup] Show Name - 03 [ABCD1234].mkv`
`[Group] Show - EPvN`	`[Group] Show - 01v2.mkv` (version 2 release)

Fansub files default to Season 1, since anime typically uses different series names for each season (e.g., “Digimon Adventure” vs “Digimon Adventure 02”).

Scene release cleanup

Scene release filenames like Show.S01E01.DVDRip.XviD-DEiMOS.avi are handled automatically — quality tags (720p, BluRay, DVDRip), codecs (x264, XviD), and release group names (-DEiMOS) are stripped from the episode title so your iPod shows clean metadata.

Series title from folders

When files are inside a Show Name/Season XX/ folder structure, podkit uses the folder name as the series title. This is preferred over filename-based parsing because folder names typically contain the full show name. This means a file like S01E01.avi inside Breaking Bad/Season 1/ correctly gets “Breaking Bad” as its series title.

For scene release folders like Show.Name.S01E01-54.DUBBED.DVDRip.XviD-GROUP/, podkit cleans up the folder name by stripping quality indicators, codecs, episode ranges, and edition tags to extract the clean series title.

Setting Up Video Collections

Add a video source to your config file:

[video.movies]
path = "/path/to/movies"

[video.shows]
path = "/path/to/tv-shows"

[defaults]
video = "movies"

Syncing Commands

# Sync all video collections
podkit sync -t video

# Sync a specific collection
podkit sync -t video -c shows

# Preview changes
podkit sync -t video --dry-run

# Remove videos no longer in source
podkit sync -t video --delete

# Override quality for this sync
podkit sync -t video --video-quality medium

# Sync to a specific device (by name or mount path)
podkit sync -t video -d classic

Listing Video

See what’s on your iPod or in your collections:

# Video on your iPod
podkit device video

# Video in a collection
podkit collection video

# Output as JSON
podkit device video --format json