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pup

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 31, 2009
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It looks like the only way that I can view movies from my collection of ripped DVDs on my iPad is via the AppleTV app under the Home Sharing section. That's fine - but in days past, I was able to save those movies to the iPad for offline viewing. I don't remember if that was via the old iTunes app or an earlier version of the AppleTV app, but it definitely existed. Now, there's no download option that I can find and so it seems like three's no way to get these movies onto an iOS device.

Is that so, or am I missing an obvious trick here? It's been years since I've tried doing this so it's likely that I've just missed some change in how Apple does things.

Seems like these movies should be syncing to iCloud just like music. Obviously there's a big file size difference, but conceptually at least, that how my brain wants it to work. Right now, it seems like these movies aren't allowed to leave the confines of my home wifi.
 
If you have a usbC port, an external hard drive will do the trick!
last year i used both files on the macbook air and air drop to the ipad
that accepted mp4 movies.

i hope this helped and was clear
 
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I used to use iTunes, but after issues with home sharing on tvOS and not liking the UI, I switched to Plex and haven’t regretted it.

Plex gives your ripped content a look similar to most streaming apps, like Netflix. You can also stream to your devices when not at home, or download content for offline viewing (devices like iPhones and iPads, not ATV for offline viewing).

I take an ATV with me when ever I travel and have access to all my Plex media.

An added bonus is the content search feature. This feature is in beta, but it works great. It finds just about any content out there and lets you know what services offers it for free, sub, rent, purchase, or if it isn’t available anywhere.

They also have free content on the app with ads.

In addition to movies and tv, you can also use it for music, photos, home movies, and other stuff.
 
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Connect the iPad to the Mac via usb c cable, open a finder window the access the iPad from there Via the movies tab. Those files have to be converted to mp4 or m4v. If you have Infuse installed you can open the files tab in the finder window and drag the movie files over to the Infuse folder, these files can be a MKV file and Infuse will play it.
 
This is easy and works very much like how it was done in iTunes in the past. Now the synching is done in Finder instead of iTunes (now in TV app as the iTunes replacement for video) on modern Macs: Step by Step

Bonus tip: I create an iPad "playlist" in the TV app and then drag a selection of movies I'd like on iPad into that playlist. Instead of #5-6 as described at the link which is about individual movies, I choose to sync just that one playlist as a group. When I want to replace movies in the playlist, I delete those I no longer want on iPad out of the TV app playlist and sub in others, then sync with iPad.

Besides making this a single checkbox option in Finder to sync a current mix of movies vs. #5-6 options, I can also see the total file size of the playlist so I can manage it versus available space on iPad...

iPadMoviesPlaylist.jpg


This lets me know that these 23 movies I want to put on my iPad will need about 40GB of free space. When I change the mix of movies, that number changes and I can add & delete accordingly to get the target size suitable for the free space. Here's the choices in Finder...

iPadMoviesFinder.jpg


Movies tab, check "Sync movies onto iPad", select "playlists" tab, check the desired playlist.

Bonus #2: if you are using a shared Mac, everybody can make their own mix of movies in their own playlist and then choose their unique playlist for their iDevice. In other words, as implied by the very bottom of that last screen grab, there could be several movie playlists in that list and different people could check different boxes for the movie mix they want on their device.

In brief: exactly like synching music playlists to an iDevice, one can sync video playlists to an iDevice... EXCEPT you build video playlists in the TV app on Mac (or still iTunes on a PC). On Mac, you do this synching in Finder while on PC it still occurs in iTunes.

And "one more thing": Where are they once synched to iPad? TV app, Library, "movies" or "tv shows", etc.
 
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Thanks everyone, I didn't even know that iOS devices had special windows in the finder.

And great tips, @HobeSoundDarryl, thanks!
 
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