OK, scratched the whole lettin' iTunes do it & went back into handbrake. I figured there's got to be a better way.
Finally figured out (which I seem to have missed in days of googling) that if you simply hit the "Show Presets" it'll show you EXACTLY what you're looking for.
A couple things to note.......
#1.) When you hit "Show Presets" it will literally pop the menu right out of your (regular, not wide) screen's view. So then drag handbrake's window over so you can actually SEE the presets.
#2.) Don't bother setting the aspect ratio yourself, just select "ipod/iphone" as the preset........***BUT***.......if you want the best looking movie, click in the lower section of handbrake under "video" and select the "2nd pass" option. (It is not already selected)
#3.) When you're done.......you CANNOT drag/drop the movie in yourself, but you *can* drag/drop the movie into the playlist........so do that, then when you click back in your iPod and select the "Movies" tab for your ipod, it'll show that particular movie. Then you can sync everything, or select just that movie & sync the movie. (Obviously click apply down at the bottom to do so 'cuz sometimes iTunes says "sync" and sometimes it says "apply".)
Sorry, I'm not Mac savy, so to me iTunes is the most illogical POS software I have ever seen in my life and geared 101% toward selling people stuff and syncing (aka "isolating so nobody can swap music") everything all the time, every time.
Jobs DIAF!!!!!!!