Crash your iPod Photo, with a Video-File

Published: 2005-08-31 10:30:30

I explored Apple's implementation of M4B files and devised a method to embed video in these files. The resulting file displays video content in iTunes without QuickTime, but crashes my iPod Photo upon playback. Despite this, I am sharing it in case other iPod models yield different results. A guide on creating such videos may follow.

Crash your iPod Photo, with a Video-File

I invested some time in studying Apple's current implementation of M4B files and found a way implement a regular frame-based Video-File in there. I searched some Open Source Utilities to aid me an my way, wrote a Python script to generate such a file, tried it in iTunes, and was amazed. The file shows Video-Content in iTunes, without running the Quicktime-Player (Video is shown in the Cover-Window). It's basically just a hack which adds a new Cover-Frame every 4ms (which is basically regular 25fps PAL Video). However, when I, then, tried it on my iPod Photo (20gb U2 Edition), it crashed directly. Upon starting the file it crashed and rebooted. I tried some other File variations and got always the same results. I'm anyways releasing this file as it still might be that other iPod Color Models may play it, who knows, there could be hardware differences between the U2 edition and the other editions.
So, grab the unofficial first iPod Video File here and wonder how it crashes your iPod :)
Btw. I'm in no way responsible for any damage done to your iPod by playing and or using this file.
If there's interest, I'll release the how-to create those videos, too.

Download the File here: