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iPad 2 Play Downloaded .avi Files?

andythursby said:
You're totally wrong. you can either convert or play with live conversion (see pic). Playing with live conversion is streaming, convert converts it on the pc for later transferral to the iPad. so if you're around the house, just stream, if you're going on trip, convert, transfer then travel
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the live streaming on airvideo is just not a viable option for many people only on wifi machines or who cant leave their computers on 24/7. its really an option for when you arent moving - at home, visiting parents, at dorm etc.

another poster stated that airvideo can put sound out of sync when converting hard copies to put onto ipad. can anyone else confirm this? why not just use handbrake or isquint etc ? they convert perfectly and at awesome quality for playback on Tv. plus the converting part is what people are trying to avoid.

i just got AVplayerHD. awesome interface. great picture but on my ipad1 i cant get the sound synced perfectly. waste of 3 bucks. anybody use cinex or O have this problem? Vlc quality is craptacular and no video out.
 
EbolaMonkey said:
Just so I can be 100% clear on this:

AirVideo will work with video files that have been - ahem - acquired from sources other than iTunes?
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Yes.

AirVideo is the best couple of bucks I've spent in quite some time. I use it all the time.
 
smoking monkey said:
the live streaming on airvideo is just not a viable option for many people only on wifi machines or who cant leave their computers on 24/7. its really an option for when you arent moving - at home, visiting parents, at dorm etc.

another poster stated that airvideo can put sound out of sync when converting hard copies to put onto ipad. can anyone else confirm this? why not just use handbrake or isquint etc ? they convert perfectly and at awesome quality for playback on Tv. plus the converting part is what people are trying to avoid.
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you repeated what i said, that streaming is best at home. I also said to convert for when you go out. i used to use airvideo to convert until i got VLC when it came out and had no issues with airvideo's conversion, never had it out of sync. i don't have a mac so don't use handbrake, but conversion software on windows blows as usually ends up out of sync or some other issues, which is why i used airvideo. plus why mess with handbrake or whatever when airvideo does it all for you, you go pick the file it does it, rather than messing about with settings
 
andythursby said:
you repeated what i said, that streaming is best at home. I also said to convert for when you go out. i used to use airvideo to convert until i got VLC when it came out and had no issues with airvideo's conversion, never had it out of sync. i don't have a mac so don't use handbrake, but conversion software on windows blows as usually ends up out of sync or some other issues, which is why i used airvideo. plus why mess with handbrake or whatever when airvideo does it all for you, you go pick the file it does it, rather than messing about with settings
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good to hear no sound sync issues for you.

it is what you said but i think it needed to be highlighted because airvideo advocates make it sound like streaming from a computer that must be on to locations that must have 3g or wifi is the norm. it isnt for many.

and converting is kind of missing the point.


BTW, are you happy with the murky quality of VLC? along with the odd freeze and poor scrubbing and no video out i gave up on it.
 
smoking monkey said:
good to hear no sound sync issues for you.

it is what you said but i think it needed to be highlighted because airvideo advocates make it sound like streaming from a computer that must be on to locations that must have 3g or wifi is the norm. it isnt for many.

and converting is kind of missing the point.
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i'd never stream unless i was on wifi with the same machine, as to do otherwise is too much effort.

i did try cinexplayer for a bit and that seemed to be good, nothing beats VLC, just a shame that douchebag got it pulled from the app store
 
So how does it work when you want to put the file on your iPad hard drive instead of streaming? Do you just drag files onto the app in iTunes?
 
smoking monkey said:
the live streaming on airvideo is just not a viable option for many people only on wifi machines or who cant leave their computers on 24/7. its really an option for when you arent moving - at home, visiting parents, at dorm etc.

another poster stated that airvideo can put sound out of sync when converting hard copies to put onto ipad. can anyone else confirm this? why not just use handbrake or isquint etc ? they convert perfectly and at awesome quality for playback on Tv. plus the converting part is what people are trying to avoid.

i just got AVplayerHD. awesome interface. great picture but on my ipad1 i cant get the sound synced perfectly. waste of 3 bucks. anybody use cinex or O have this problem? Vlc quality is craptacular and no video out.
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AirVideo has Handbrake baked inside the server app so the conversion results should be the same. I have never experienced audio being out of sync and I have converted well over hundreds of files in the past year, thanks to airvideo's awesome interface I did most of the conversions when I am away from my computer using the iPhone app. I would never convert video files manually if I had to do it myself, haha. AirVideo makes it so simple.
 
guitarguy316 said:
Is air video the same way or do I need the cine player?
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nope, air video converts the files into iOS friendly video files and you put them into the iTunes video library and they appear in the videos app

with cinexplayer and others like it you go to your iPad in iTunes, go to apps, scroll down to file sharing, choose cinexplayer on that left panel then drag the video into the panel on the right
 
Cinexplayer is my strong recommendation with Buzzplayer a close second. (buzz player supports ac3 and mkv where cinex layer does not)

I wanted a solution on my iPad where I can download the avi file straight from the Internet using a download manager and then open it up straight into a player (cinex and buzz identify themselves as supporting avi so "open in" works just fine).

It's great that people are fans of air video (as am I) but I pretty much use my iPad as my only computing device and now avoid whenever possible running servers and connecting to external files/drives and transcoding... Blech.

1. Download in file manager app directly onto iPad.
2. Open in (and copy file to) divx playback app.
3. Watch.
4. Delete file in both places or keep an archive in one of the two.

No additional computers. No servers to keep running. No drives or directories to keep managed. No transcoding.

If I want to get fancy I will just plug my iPad into my tv via hdmi and watch it on a big screen.

The downside with this approach is that I no longer have a growing movie and tv collection but I am fine with that.. There are already too many movies out there to want to keep anything to MAYBE watch it again in the future.. The days of me trying to amass some giant media archive are long gone so I am less worried about collecting, organizing and rewatching terabytes or movies, tv, etc.
 
Media Browser is my favorite, not feature rich but works perfect for almost all video formats.
 
Is there a way to get vlc on your iPad if you didn't download it before it was pulled? Ie is it possible for someone to post the .ipa file and then sync it to the iPad or does it not work that way?
 
archdelux said:
Is there a way to get vlc on your iPad if you didn't download it before it was pulled? Ie is it possible for someone to post the .ipa file and then sync it to the iPad or does it not work that way?
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I'm not sure but I would suggest you not bother trying. While VLC Is amazing on the Mac it was definitely janky in the iPad. It had just initially been rolled out and not yet updated so it didn't support many (most) codecs and the ones it did really had some pretty poor performance (stutter, lag, etc.)

I would recommend you consider any number of the programs mentioned in this thread. I like cinexplayer but generally steer away from avi files in .mkv format and AC3 audio -- neither of which cinexplayer supports. If you are looking for mkv support and AC3 then I would point you to Buzz Player.

If you are looking for VLC because you are looking for a free/cheap option I would suggest you consider spending money on one of the apps that costs a few bucks. They are not super expensive and supporting their development and ensures future updates or just the availability of these types of apps in general.

If your budget is super limited and you had to pick between one of my recommendations I would suggest buzz player. While I prefer cinexplayer a little bit more currently, it seems like it hasn't received much attention from it's developers recently while tripe buzz player app has had a number of upgrades and improvements recently and, I suspect, much more support in the future...
 
cinca said:
I'm not sure but I would suggest you not bother trying. While VLC Is amazing on the Mac it was definitely janky in the iPad. It had just initially been rolled out and not yet updated so it didn't support many (most) codecs and the ones it did really had some pretty poor performance (stutter, lag, etc.)

I would recommend you consider any number of the programs mentioned in this thread. I like cinexplayer but generally steer away from avi files in .mkv format and AC3 audio -- neither of which cinexplayer supports. If you are looking for mkv support and AC3 then I would point you to Buzz Player.

If you are looking for VLC because you are looking for a free/cheap option I would suggest you consider spending money on one of the apps that costs a few bucks. They are not super expensive and supporting their development and ensures future updates or just the availability of these types of apps in general.

If your budget is super limited and you had to pick between one of my recommendations I would suggest buzz player. While I prefer cinexplayer a little bit more currently, it seems like it hasn't received much attention from it's developers recently while tripe buzz player app has had a number of upgrades and improvements recently and, I suspect, much more support in the future...
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actually it did get updated before it got pulled from 1.0 to 1.1, and i've been using VLC on iPad and iPhone since it came out and had absolutely no issue, i've tried others since and keep going back to VLC. it plays the mpg's, avi's, mp4's, flv's that i have in it on my devices, with no stutter, lag or anything.

it's just a shame we'll never get an update for it to enable video out and airplay.

cinexplayer and buzz both seem to have sputtered and crashed out on me.
 
andythursby said:
actually it did get updated before it got pulled from 1.0 to 1.1, and i've been using VLC on iPad and iPhone since it came out and had absolutely no issue, i've tried others since and keep going back to VLC. it plays the mpg's, avi's, mp4's, flv's that i have in it on my devices, with no stutter, lag or anything.

it's just a shame we'll never get an update for it to enable video out and airplay.

cinexplayer and buzz both seem to have sputtered and crashed out on me.
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Sounds like it's at least worth a try... Anyone care to post the ipa file to see if it will work on other ppls iPads?
 
I just downloaded air video yesterday. After the avi is converted, is it stored anywhere on the iPad? I guess I’m a bit afraid of it chewing up my storage space. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Sorry, if this question sounds stupid.
 
I use vlc and air video. Since my computer is so old, single core penguin M 1.6ghz I cannot do live streaming, or stream while converting otter files. So I use air video most to convert and vlc for playback.

Sometimes I will play via air video, if my comp is doing nothing else at the time.
 
xinyuewon said:
I just downloaded air video yesterday. After the avi is converted, is it stored anywhere on the iPad? I guess I’m a bit afraid of it chewing up my storage space. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Sorry, if this question sounds stupid.
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It's not stored anywhere on the iPad. No worries there.
 
cinca said:
I'm not sure but I would suggest you not bother trying. While VLC Is amazing on the Mac it was definitely janky in the iPad.

I like cinexplayer... for mkv support and AC3 then I would point you to Buzz Player.

If you are looking for VLC because you are looking for a free/cheap option I would suggest you consider spending money on one of the apps that costs a few bucks.

If your budget is super limited and you had to pick between one of my recommendations I would suggest buzz player.
Click to expand...

I agree with the VLC appraisal. I know Andy sings its praises, but the picture simply doesn't look anywhere near as good as Cinexplayer or isquint conversions (best settings). The best way to describe the vision is MURKY.

It also froze on me a few times and there is no video out. Cinex used to crash but it seems very solid now and hasn't crashed once on me since I got it a couple weeks back.

I tried Oplayer, AVplayerHD and another one (Not buzz) and none of them apart from Cinex played my .avi files with correct sound sync. That's an absolute killer. I can't accept when the sound is slightly out of sync.

I'm on ipad 1 so perhaps on 2 there are no sound sync problems. AVplayerHD has an excellent interface. (yes, I had all other apps closed and wifi off but I still got the sync problems)

I want to try Buzz player. Sounds good.
 
smoking monkey said:
I agree with the VLC appraisal. I know Andy sings its praises, but the picture simply doesn't look anywhere near as good as Cinexplayer or isquint conversions (best settings). The best way to describe the vision is MURKY.

It also froze on me a few times and there is no video out. Cinex used to crash but it seems very solid now and hasn't crashed once on me since I got it a couple weeks back.

I tried Oplayer, AVplayerHD and another one (Not buzz) and none of them apart from Cinex played my .avi files with correct sound sync. That's an absolute killer. I can't accept when the sound is slightly out of sync.

I'm on ipad 1 so perhaps on 2 there are no sound sync problems. AVplayerHD has an excellent interface. (yes, I had all other apps closed and wifi off but I still got the sync problems)

I want to try Buzz player. Sounds good.
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i don't know what files your using, but the ones i download play perfectly on VLC, i agree about the lack of video out, that sucks, am sure that and airplay was coming in an update before it got pulled. I've been using the app for at least an hour a day (more on weekends) since it came out and it's never crashed once, not on my ipad 1 or 2 or iPhone 4. Maybe i'm just lucky, who knows.
 
andythursby said:
i don't know what files your using, but the ones i download play perfectly on VLC, i agree about the lack of video out, that sucks, am sure that and airplay was coming in an update before it got pulled. I've been using the app for at least an hour a day (more on weekends) since it came out and it's never crashed once, not on my ipad 1 or 2 or iPhone 4. Maybe i'm just lucky, who knows.
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Sorry, didn't mean to imply they don't play okay. The play fine and I never had sound sync problems with them. But the scrubbing was poor and the video quality was muted/murky compared to cinex and isquint conversion. But it did work fine apart from the few times it crashed.

I agree that if VLC had been allowed to continue we wouldn't be talking about this now. I think it would have been the best out there as they would have fixed all the problems it had and then some.
 
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