The iPhone only accepts audio and video files in these three formats: AAC, MP3 and M4A.

Most videos and film clips that are downloaded from the internet are in .MOV, .AVI, .MPEG, .MPG formats. If this is the case with your files you will need a video to iPhone converter.

There are many places to find video to iPhone converters. Each works in a very similar way: select the video files you wish to convert to iPhone format and allow it to work its magic. If you are converting videos ensure you select the .M4A format to convert to.

Once the files have been converted, you can fire up iTunes and attempt to add the newly created files to your iTunes library. They should automatically be recognised as video files and live in the “Movies” category. You can then drag the video files to your iPhone if you manually manage it, or hit the sync button to flash them to the iPhone.

It is worth noting that movie files that have been downloaded from P2P networks such as LimeWire or Torrent websites breach video piracy laws and can elicit hefty fines.

Using the YouTube Video Feature
When you open YouTube from the home screen, you’re presented with five options across the bottom of the screen, all of which are self-explanatory:

• Featured
• Most Viewed
• Bookmarks
• Search
• More

Like the iPod menu, you can click the edit button in the More section to customise the lit at the bottom and choose between the four categories above as well as Most Recent, Top Rated and History.

Watching
As soon as a video begins to play in the YouTube browser, the iPhone kicks into landscape mode. You’ll need to rotate the phone on its side to watch it. As the movie loads, a box containing onscreen controls is on the screen. The middle three controls include playback control, the left button allows you to bookmark the video and the right button lets you email the video to a friend.

The controls fade from the screen after a few seconds for a distraction-free picture but can be retrieved by simply tapping the screen. You can then pause, rewind and fast-forward the video, change the volume with the slider at the bottom or move to a particular point in the clip by using the slider at the top of the screen.

When the video completes, the iPhone automatically switches back to portrait mode and you can view more detailed information about the clip, see similar clips or access the bookmarking section.

Because each video is being streamed live from the web, they might occasionally freeze playing to load. To improve his, pause the video and allow the progress bar to load further before you resume.