Older iPods were no longer supported by iTunes long ago; in fact, Apple no longer supports any iPods. An alternate programme like Foobar or something similar will serve you better. You can find many options by searching for "alternatives to iTunes for original iPod" on Google.

I copy the upmost BBcode quote_ID (13 in this case) then close off quote and open new ones by pasting after, which lets me interject responses per section.

VBR tries to take into account more for what needs the space for better compression. Yeah randomly seeking is a bit slower, but i think it's worth it. For videos they would store key frame ID and location so seeking to those then gets you close.

As for you doing encoding, it's not too hard. I've just been doing FFMpeg program. Right now my goto is AAC using 0.7 for general purpose (can do 0.5 for just talking like lectures) and 1.0 for music. Though maybe take a complex 1 minute section of music and adjust until you can't hear any differences, may be closer to 1.3.

So example: ffmpeg -i classicsong.flac -acodec aac -q:a 1.0 -t 60 classicsong.m4a

the -t 60 limits to a 1 minute section, this would be great for quick encodes to test and check quality, otherwise remove it. If you prefer a bitrate, change -q:a 1.0, to -b:a 256k and you're set probably.

Well after the 2000 MickyMouse Copyright Extension act (life+70) really is odd because it only benefits corporations and companies. You have to be some kind of nut to decide how you want your created works to be sold and who it could be sold to, after you're dead. No it was fully intended not for individual creators, it was intended for hoarders of copyrights with the intent to indefinitely sell them.

Probably a lot more i could say on the topic, but it's ranting and on DRM and peeves of corporations going after individuals and how it looks bad when a corporation is suing a 12 yearold girl for downloading a song or dead people... And how preventing sharing of files will never go their way.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

As for upgrading Windows, perhaps only the bourgeoisie have the funds and the will to keep up when other things intrude..
Sometimes life gets in the way.
Whatever.

I don't know if it works for iPod but I use iTunes v.12.10.10.2 for my old iPhone. I believe you can also update it to v. 12.10.11.2 if you installed it on Windows 7.

I'm so grateful to you for going to all this trouble. Been reading your post with care, and have saved it all to be looked at later. I'll reply more carefully to morrow, but meanwhile I just wanted to thank you for all your help. I'll practise the quote posting, I used to fly through it, but it's years since I've posted in these forums, trolls and snide remarks kept my head below the parapet.

Sure, glad to help. I may not understand the more complex parts of imagemagick or ffmpeg, but i can get about 60% there with what i know, and helping others get by too. Heh, got someone on PM who has issues with having a bunch of avi files and how they would have trouble converting the whole directory. I gave a one-line cygwin/mingw command that would handle it, now it's a matter of if they try it or need help getting it to work so they can use different containers.

>> I'll practice the quote posting, I used to fly through it, but it's years since I've posted in these forums, trolls and snide remarks kept my head below the parapet.

Don't push yourself, you could always do email indent > if you have to as i did this time; Or some people just surround in a quote. A little more obscure who said it though

I dunno, I don't consider myself affluent and I decided to just get Linux on my machine. Pretty painless these days.