I did a free trial of Wondershare Dr Fone and it looks like it recovered all of my photos and videos, but I have to pay $50-100 -_- . I'm too afraid to press the "restore" button because I'm afraid that if I do that, then not even Wondershare Dr Fone can get my pictures/videos back.
Right now my iPod is still stuck in the "connect to iTunes" screen so I can't access my iCloud to see if it backed up without pressing restore
I'll try different apps such as TinyUmbrella, RecBoot, and if it still doesn't work, I'll bring it to the Apple Genius next weekend (Apple store is out-of-town). @dottiesyrky: Did you have to pay for the Apple Genius's assistance?