I spend a significant amount of time every now and then converting movies and shows to an iPhone-friendly format. Quite understandably, the simple mention of “avi” (nothing to do with na’vi) by Apple on the iPad tech specs page got my hopes pretty high. Unfortunately, this is not what one might think.
Far from me to explain to you what a codec is or how video works, but here is the deal, while the iPad will indeed be able to read certain avi files, its support is very limited. As posted by Apple:
Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
This is the format you get when filming on your point and shoot. In short, you’ll be able to transfer what you filmed on your camera and watch it right away on your iPad. On the other hand, this has nothing to do with the Divx and Xvid format the movies you download via torrents come in, for these, you’ll still have to convert.
While the footage support is great, this is just making me realise how much of a pain Apple is with these video formats. The iPad, like Steve said, will be amazing to watch videos on the plane, but unless you’re ready to drop $3 per episode, be ready to spend the night before your flight converting all your shows to mp4.
I know they’re protecting their revenues here, but they opened-up for eBooks, why not videos then?
“… be ready to spend the night before your flight converting all your shows to mp4.
I know they’re protecting their revenues here, but they opened-up for eBooks, why not videos then?”
I completely agree.
Well, Motion JPEG is not very heavily compressed – so it is quite easy on the processor (that’s why they can support data rates being that high). MPEG-4/H264 decompression is supported by the hardware. Supporting DivX and Xvid would put an enormous load on the processor, as there is no hardware support for it. It makes much more sense to convert on a powerful desktop computer, than to drain the iPad battery so fast, that you can’t even watch an entire movie in the end. Another question would be, if the CPU is even able to decompress these formats fast enough at full screen resolution. 720p DivX is not exactly easy on the CPU.
There’s a reason they didn’t port over OS X’s QuickTime 7 to iPhone OS and instead started from scratch on what would become Snow Leoaprd’s QuickTime X. H.264 is highly optimized in QuickTime X (for iPhone OS and OS X). Playing other formats would dramatically reduce battery life as the processor would have to decode that video like a desktop computer does. It’s not just a matter of installing a codec and letting it play. It’s a lot, lot more complicated than that. Apple decided to make things simple to avoid users wondering why when they play a DivX file, their iPad only lasts an hour.
Even more complicated is the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad m4v specific filetype. It’s not just DRM in an H.264 file, it’s a iPhone OS optimized video encoded using H.264. It’s quite frustrating.
Apple don’t support DivX/XviD on the Mac, let alone the iPhone/iPad. The issue is around patents, it’s pretty likely that DivX/XviD rip off technology owned by the mpeg group or someone similar. No-one’s gone after DivX/XviD yet because it’s not worth it, but the betting is that as soon as Apple support it they’ll be hit by a big law suit. It’s not worth the risk for Apple, especially when H.264 is better. If nothing else, as soon as Apple are seen to be supporting a format used almost exclusively for bit torrent downloads of illegal rips they’re in trouble with the media conglomerates.
On the other hand, if you rip your own DVDs into digital copies using Handbrake say, and do so into mp4 or m4v format, you’ll have no problem playing them back on any Apple kit. If they wanted to restrict people to only playing content purchased through the iTunes store they could do so, this isn’t about that at all. What I would like is to have an export preset in QuickTime to export to a universal format that works on both AppleTV and iPhone, it’s a real pain to have to keep two versions of files. Handbrake does have such a preset for original rips, and in the latest version can be used to transcode from one video file format into others. Handbrake is your friend
It’s kind of funny Jobs said netbooks weren’t good for anything during the ipads unveiling. The list of things a netbook can do that the ipad can’t just gets longer and longer.
Guys,
here is the easy solution. Very very simple. Just use doubletwist. Instead of using lame ass itunes use doubletwist. Its another synching solution that is better than iTunes. If you drop your videos into the video folder it converts/synchs automatically to mp4 and the quality is amazing. Try it, you will not care about converting again
“If nothing else, as soon as Apple are seen to be supporting a format used almost exclusively for bit torrent downloads of illegal rips they’re in trouble with the media conglomerates.”
Except the hardware arms of said conglomerates (e.g. Sony) happily make DVD players that will handle DivX, Xvid files and market that as a major selling point.
this is THE answer:
download air video on your pc and on your ipad. then, ipad uses your pc as a server and converts LIVE any movie, video, etc.
that’s all.
easy