How do I copy movies to AppleTV and iPod without syncing?

I'm not sure but couldn't you disable "automatic syncing"? Would that work? You would have to manually manage all the files, but it sounds like that's what you're trying to do.

markw10 said:

I have both a Video iPod and a AppleTV. I have a lot of short videos that I read into my Mac from DVD's. I like to put these on my video iPod and the AppleTV. Because of a shortage of hard drive space I don't like to keep these files on my Mac. I'd like to simply be able to copy these files to either of these devices. I have been able to drag a song in iTunes to my iPod to do this but can't do this with videos and also can't do this to my AppleTV. Is there a way to do this?
For now I have syncing turned on and select what videos I want to copy over in the sync options for movies. I'm sure if I deleted these items from my computer in the next sync it would be deleted from the device.

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You need to turn off syncing in the iPod preference pane by clicking the "Manually manage music and videos." Then you can manually drag & drop whatever you want, songs and videos (assuming they are correctly encoded for the iPod) into the iPod playlists to your heart's content. If you delete them from your hard drive, they won't delete off the iPod unless you go back to syncing mode again...on purpose or by mistake!

If I may editorialize for just a sec...most here would probably agree that there's no good reason to do this. All you risk is accidentally losing your video clips via the back-and-forth syncing/manually managing stuff and one day slapping your head I lost all my videos! You don't mention what kind of computer you have but if hard drive space on your machine is at such a premium that you need to keep your only copy of certain items on your iPod, may I suggest buying a cheap external hard drive for your computer? The biggest iPod holds only 80GB, I just bought a 750GB external drive at Fry's for $239.

Finally, you can't do this at all with AppleTV. Although some folks have posted some embedded error messages they've found buried in the AppleTV software that suggest that someday manual managment may be possible, for now it's just straight-up syncing what's on your computer's hard drive. And once again, if you sync to AppleTV then delete from the computer, you've got nothin' at the next sync.