Ipad and Importing/Converting video

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tdgeek

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# 83163 11-May-2011 22:56

I can see I need to convert video if its not H.264 ot Mpeg4.

Can anyone recommend a good converter for video for iPad and also an iPhone4?

Is it correct that iTunes can re-encode to suit either device?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers
T

TeWharau

35 posts

Geek

# 468131 12-May-2011 07:31

Jailbreak + VLC.app = no conversion needed

tdgeek

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# 468133 12-May-2011 07:38

Tks for the reply.

Not interested in JB again, but I do have VLC on the iphone, can I move that to the ipad?

riahon

932 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 468134 12-May-2011 07:45

tdgeek: Tks for the reply.

Not interested in JB again, but I do have VLC on the iphone, can I move that to the ipad?

I did, works well

toyonut

1508 posts

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# 469005 14-May-2011 09:57

Otherwise handbrake is excellent and has settings built in to optimize playback on ios devices.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

tdgeek

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# 469009 14-May-2011 10:20

Handbrake looks good, thank you.

I see it now does not support Divx/Xvid I assume it still does when Divx/Xvid is the source?

eracode

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# 469115 14-May-2011 18:05

tdgeek: Handbrake looks good, thank you.

I see it now does not support Divx/Xvid I assume it still does when Divx/Xvid is the source?

Yep, it supports a wide range of source formats.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

WaxerNZ

69 posts

Master Geek

# 469227 15-May-2011 10:24

Why not just get one of the many media players on the appstore. Huge range of formats supported and transferring can be done drag and drop through the app tab in itunes.
avplayerhd can handle up to 720p on ipad2 and goodplayer handles an exteme amount of different codecs. They are both supposed to be quite good. I hear vlc is quite crap in comparison. They are not free but $4 is crap all to spend when you will be spending hours converting video. What is your time worth?
The only reason I would convert or encode all my media is if I was after a univeral approach with apple tv etc and a networked house.

UncleArk

92 posts

Master Geek

# 469241 15-May-2011 10:58

I agree with the previous poster.

The iPad may not handle some of the more commonly used codecs by default - but to suggest that it cannot handle them at all is nothing but misleading as you can install one of several third party players which will handle pretty much anything you care to throw at it.

I have bought several such players (to see which is the best) since they are dirt cheap.

OPlayer cost me $5.29 NZ and CineX player cost $6.49 and Airplayer cost $6.49.

I have uninstalled the VLC player (which was, for a while, free through the App store until it was pulled for being in contradiction of the GPL licencing). The reason being that I found it to be unstable and quite clunky. It was laggy and generally poor in performance compared to other players in the app store.

Their free alternatinve - the VLC media streamer I also found to have poor performance compared to Airplayer. I would qualify this however by saying that I found this to be the case when it was released - it may have been updated since then and be better than when I trialed it. In the meantime other apps have been working fine so haven't bothered revisiting it.

CineX player is my personal preference as I like the interface - it allows long file names to be displayed which I like as it means I can use my long established naming conventions for labeling the TV shows I watch through it. It's simple to operate and performs to my expectations flawlessly every time (qualified by saying that I am now using it on an iPad 2 of course which has better performance for video then the Ipad1).

CineX and Oplayer operate by drag and drop to the app in iTunes - couldn't be simpler. And media can be deleted from within the app when watched.

Airplayer allows you to have a media server on your desktop machine which can broadcast your media through your home WiFi to your iPad. This too supports a wide variety of codecs and can transcode on the fly. To be honest performance on my first gen iPad using this was fine as long as everything was standard def. Anything more higher res would have performance issues.
Now using an iPad2 Airplayer really comes into it's own and is an awesome application - although limited to your home environment where your WiFi is of course.

In summary, do NOT get too hung up over the limited range of video formats available on the iPad out of the box. There ARE several options and they cost so very little money that they are worth every cent.

tdgeek

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# 469245 15-May-2011 11:37

Thank you all.

I will review AVPlayerHD, CineX and OPlayer.

I have an iPad1 and no real need to go iPad2. My video needs are collections of camera video, SD vidcam video that are included in my Home Photo/Video collection.

At time I may include any Divx/Xvid docos I assume they will be ok on iPad1

Thanks again to all, and for the time and detail provided