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I played 720p and 1080p MKVs on my iPad 3

H

homeboy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 23, 2007
467
1
London
I love bluray movies, they look like nothing else. Naturally I would want to be as close to the same experience with everything I watch. My iPad 2 was incapable of smoothly playing high definition videos, not to mention the pixel limitations. So I got my iPad 3 today and decided to put it through its paces with the following:

720p espisode of the Entourage @ 600MB
1080p Tin Tin's Adventures @ 7.94GB

App used: AV Player HD

Despite no bumped CPU clockspeed the 720p file plays butter smooth and looks sublime. On the iPad 2 it was totally unwatchable and was stuttering. It's an absolute dream to watch the file on the iPad 3 and the colours are awesome.

Nevertheless you aren't talking HD if you aren't talking 1080p and I took a deep breath before I pressed play to see whether the 8GB Tintin movie would play. Unfortunately it didnt flow, there were stutter..............but not hopelessly so. The app has to been updated for the iPad 3 but if it does I am confident that the Tintin movie should be able to flow. Some better software optimisation and possibly hardware acceleration could make the iPad 3 swallow any MKVs you throw at it.

Overall I am very pleased that at least a 720p file flows on an app that has not been updated for the new hardware yet. That is very encouraging and awesome! This is an important improvement having been an iPad 2 owner.

Thankfully I ordered the 32GB version to serve my HD addiction. :)
 
Uh... actually, AVPlayerHD should be able to play 720p on iPad 2. I have tried... with many 720p clips, in fact I tried a whole Blu-Ray rip that was 12GB. It played just fine.
 
FWIW, I had the same problem just now with a 1080p MKV version of Avatar, also using AV Player. Constant skipping.

I'm hoping a third party app capable of MKV will get this working soon. Right now I'm trying to convert the same copy of Avatar into an iTunes compatible format and it's got 10 more hours!
 
bill-p said:
Uh... actually, AVPlayerHD should be able to play 720p on iPad 2. I have tried... with many 720p clips, in fact I tried a whole Blu-Ray rip that was 12GB. It played just fine.
Click to expand...

Well the same file I just played on my iPad 3 did not play well on the iPad 2.
 
Why don't you convert the MKV's down to .mp4's using Handbrake still retains the HD quality or at least it looks like it and the file size is cut in half.

As for Tin-Tin I didn't even know that movie was out yet for purchase / rental.
 
AFPoster said:
Why don't you convert the MKV's down to .mp4's using Handbrake still retains the HD quality or at least it looks like it and the file size is cut in half.

As for Tin-Tin I didn't even know that movie was out yet for purchase / rental.
Click to expand...

Because it takes a million years! Seriously, I'm doing that now on a 2010 Macbook Pro. It currently shows 18% complete with 12 hours left.
 
aperry said:
Because it takes a million years! Seriously, I'm doing that now on a 2010 Macbook Pro. It currently shows 18% complete with 12 hours left.
Click to expand...

That's not right. My 2011 MBA converts HD movies in 2 hours, though the 4 virtual cores make a huge difference. My 2009 iMac can do it in like 3-3.5 hours.
 
aperry said:
Because it takes a million years! Seriously, I'm doing that now on a 2010 Macbook Pro. It currently shows 18% complete with 12 hours left.
Click to expand...

Ah, that means you must be downloading these MKV's and not making them...

The iPad 2 has played 1080p M4V's from the get go and I have had no issues with playback. All is smooth and perfect. I'm adding in DTS audio now to my M4V's so I have all that dialed in when/if DTS support ever pops up in the Apple world (right now MPlayerX has been the only player that will output DTS sound from a M4V (for me at least).

Oh, and what about remuxing instead of re-encoding? Shouldn't take all that long.
 
As soon as my iPad is done restoring, it'll be one of the first things that I'll try. Playing none Apple standard format HD movies and see how it handles them.

Sure, I can convert them, but why should I? I and my computer have better things to do.
 
AppleHater said:
As soon as my iPad is done restoring, it'll be one of the first things that I'll try. Playing none Apple standard format HD movies and see how it handles them.

Sure, I can convert them, but why should I? I and my computer have better things to do.
Click to expand...

Playback of non mp4 files will be same as on iPad 2 - its same Cpu speed...
 
martinm0 said:
Ah, that means you must be downloading these MKV's and not making them...

The iPad 2 has played 1080p M4V's from the get go and I have had no issues with playback. All is smooth and perfect. I'm adding in DTS audio now to my M4V's so I have all that dialed in when/if DTS support ever pops up in the Apple world (right now MPlayerX has been the only player that will output DTS sound from a M4V (for me at least).

Oh, and what about remuxing instead of re-encoding? Shouldn't take all that long.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yes it is indeed a downloaded 1080p MKV, about 9 gigs large. MediaInfo shows the source video as AVC at 8,171 Kbps and audio at 448kbps AC3.

Maybe I'll try to figure out how to remux it. Admittedly, I'm far from an expert in these things!
 
AFPoster said:
Why don't you convert the MKV's down to .mp4's using Handbrake still retains the HD quality or at least it looks like it and the file size is cut in half.

As for Tin-Tin I didn't even know that movie was out yet for purchase / rental.
Click to expand...

Like others have pointed out there is nothing more convenient than being able to download something and play it across different devices without having to waste time, energy and hardware space on converting.
 
I've tried ECPlayer and good player. Good player was hopeless on a 1080p x264 Mkv.

ECPlayer was able to playback the file with buffering turned on. It gave me a warning about low buffer space but played it anyway. I tried it again after using some other apps and it stuttered. After a reboot it played fine dispite the buffer warning again.

I only watched a few min. So I don't know what will happen as the movie plays on.

I'm sure a quick remux with iflicks will make the files play super smooth since the native library supports that container. I use iFlicks to convert x264 MKVs to play on apple tv all the time. However, I won't be able to try until tomorrow.

-J
 
aperry said:
Because it takes a million years! Seriously, I'm doing that now on a 2010 Macbook Pro. It currently shows 18% complete with 12 hours left.
Click to expand...

I'm using a 2011 MBP early and mine even has issues, but converting is not one of them.
When I get my blu-rays that are 30gb+ it takes me about 2.5 hours to convert to an .mp4 at 4-6gb. Now I still think this takes time, but make several tasks of movies and let it run at night, I normally get 6-8 done from the time I stop using my MBP @ 11pm - 8am when I go to work. Now I'm not going to lie there has been times I leave my mac running while I drive to work to let it finish one, but thats rare.

homeboy said:
Like others have pointed out there is nothing more convenient than being able to download something and play it across different devices without having to waste time, energy and hardware space on converting.
Click to expand...
 
aperry said:
Thanks. Yes it is indeed a downloaded 1080p MKV, about 9 gigs large. MediaInfo shows the source video as AVC at 8,171 Kbps and audio at 448kbps AC3.

Maybe I'll try to figure out how to remux it. Admittedly, I'm far from an expert in these things!
Click to expand...

mp4tools is your friend. It will remux the mkv to an m4v that should play without issue. You may want to add a 2channel aac audio track, so that it will play nice with itunes and home sharing. For the device preset, just use appletv.
 
bill-p said:
Uh... actually, AVPlayerHD should be able to play 720p on iPad 2. I have tried... with many 720p clips, in fact I tried a whole Blu-Ray rip that was 12GB. It played just fine.
Click to expand...

Tell me about it. I started re-coding some of my best titles to 1080p m4v using handbrake 0.96 from the original source. I'm only getting 10fps on Avatar with forced subs burned in :eek:

1080p m4v play very nice on the new iPad.
 
Yeah, if you encode to MP4 or M4A, it plays very well even on iPad 2.

I actually use MP4 more. MKV is just to test because apparently, some of my friends use MKV more for their DVD rips for some reason.

I have a 2011 MBP 15", so a whole movie takes just about 1 hour for me to encode.
 
JeffLebowski41 said:
mp4tools is your friend. It will remux the mkv to an m4v that should play without issue. You may want to add a 2channel aac audio track, so that it will play nice with itunes and home sharing. For the device preset, just use appletv.
Click to expand...

Thanks. The first tool I found was Subler which seems to be working well enough. It re-muxed and converted the AC3 track to AAC all in about 20 minutes. I'm now loading all 9 gigs into the iPad to see how it looks.

I'm okay with the large file size. It was the 12 hours required for conversion that was killing me. Though, based on all of your feedback, it seems that I should revisit my Handbrake settings.

Also, I don't think Subler handles DTS, so maybe I'll take a look at mp4tools for my next movie.

Thanks again!

----------

Got it loaded onto the iPad and it looks brilliant. I've also been airplaying it onto my AppleTV2 and it looks great there as well. Great technology.

However there is one issue: Subtitles don't seem to work over airplay. I can see them on the iPad, but when I redirect it to stream over to the AppleTV2 the video plays great but without any subtitles. Tried turning them on and off without luck.
 
test played a couple things:

1080p ts/tp files handbrake'd to mp4 with original resolution, RF 19.25, original files are standard 18mbps ts/tp with ac3 audio

various x264 1080p mkvs, container switched using mkvextractgui2/my mp4boxgui

all played flawlessly using the official videos app
 
djrod said:
With these apps you can demux and remux the video from h264 mkv to h264 mp4 in seconds, without loosing any bit of video quality:

http://itunes.com/mac/iflicks
http://itunes.apple.com/app/roadmovie/id408218908?mt=12

They are 100% compatible with the iPad or apple tv, no jailbreak or extra apps needed, just works with the built in video player of every iOS device
Click to expand...

So if I have a blu-ray folder back up that I remux MKV without h264 compression, these tools do not work. Basically, going from original blu-ray folder to any kind of H.264 will take a long time at 1080p.

Please correct me if my understanding is wrong. I would love to try this because Avatar is taking 6 hours!!!! (Handbrake 0.96 Apple TV 2 preset with video bumped up to 1920 from 1280)

I typically burn in forced subs because of issues getting them to display on Apple TV 2, iPhone, Xbox 360, etc. I need one format to rule them all. Right now the Handbrake setting I'm using works across the board.
 
aperry said:
Thanks. The first tool I found was Subler which seems to be working well enough. It re-muxed and converted the AC3 track to AAC all in about 20 minutes. I'm now loading all 9 gigs into the iPad to see how it looks.

I'm okay with the large file size. It was the 12 hours required for conversion that was killing me. Though, based on all of your feedback, it seems that I should revisit my Handbrake settings.

Also, I don't think Subler handles DTS, so maybe I'll take a look at mp4tools for my next movie.
Click to expand...

mp4tools will definitely convert dts to ac3 or aac, whatever you choose. It should only take a few minutes compared to hours and hours with handbrake. great app, I use it all the time.
 
H264 encoded 720p AVI files play very well on iPad 3. I have no idea how it runs on iPad 2, since I've never had it. I'm pretty impressed, especially coming from iPad 1. I had tried Transformer, and it was no better than iPad 1 in that department although I had tried many different movie players.
 
is mp4tools only available for mac? anything for windows?

are there any free ipad apps that will play mkv? i tried playable and vlc and both can't do it..
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)

Does mp4tools work on Blu-ray folders or MKV remux from Blu-ray folder?

I'm not sure if a Blu-ray folder MKV remux is x264.
 
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