
iTunes won’t transfer a few episodes of The Office onto my iPod touch, even though I have enough free space. What might be the problem?
It’s likely that the file is too high-resolution, perhaps because it was created for an Apple TV. An iPod touch wants to play files that are in pretty specific formats--check out the alphabet soup of formats under “TV and Video” on Apple’s Tech Specs page for the current iPod touch at apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html. iTunes will recognize and play video files outside those specs, so sometimes you’ll wind up with a file in your library that will play just fine within iTunes on your Mac but stubbornly refuse to sync to your device.

You might see this error if your video files aren't in the right format for your iPod touch.

But creating iPod-friendly versions of those incompatible files is a snap.
Luckily, it’s an easy fix. Select the file in iTunes, and choose Advanced > Create iPod or iPhone Version, and iTunes will make a new copy of the file in the correct format for syncing to your iPod touch. It’ll live alongside the incompatible file in iTunes, so if you keep both around and later forget which is which, go to File > Get Info on each of the files, and check out their filenames in the Where section of the Summary tab. The names should be similar, with the newer file ending in -1. Now just sync the new iPod-compatible file in the normal fashion and you’ll be cringing at the antics of Michael and Dwight in no time.
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