iPad .mov on SSD - some play, some don’t

[Macmonter]

Have Sandisk portable Extreme 1TB SSD formatted exFAT on which I copied 600+GB of .mov comprised of 150+ vids. The vids were copied from an 11 year old Mac Pro running Snow Lepard (copied before HD dies). PROBLEM: about 25 of the 150+ .mov vids will not play on my iPad Pro running the latest OS. When the vid is selected, only the title displays but no play arrow. The unplayable vids vary in size from few hundred MB to multiple GB. However, all the vids are playable from the SSD on the Mac Pro and on a Mac Mini running Catalina. QUESTION: why does the iPad not play certain .mov while other Macs do?

 

[sparksd]

What happens if you copy one of the unplayable videos to the iPad? Does the result differ if you copy from the SSD through the Files app vs copying another way, e.g. a wireless transfer? I have the same issue with mp4 files larger than 4.3GB on exFAT media.

 

[Macmonter]

What happens if you copy one of the unplayable videos to the iPad? Does the result differ if you copy from the SSD through the Files app vs copying another way, e.g. a wireless transfer? I have the same issue with mp4 files larger than 4.3GB on exFAT media.

I copied to my iCloud Drive with the iPad with the same result: vid title displays but no play arrow. My old Mac Pro does not have WiFi. If an unplayable vid is copied to the SSD from the Mac mini - it’s the same problem when attempting to play on the iPad. My researching leads me to think it has something to do with the vid’s “wrapper” (container?) in spite of the fact that all the vids are .mov.

 

[AutomaticApple]

My researching leads me to think it has something to do with the vid’s “wrapper” in spite of the fact that all the vids are .mov.

I'd like to think that's the case too.

 

[muzzy996]

I believe you're on the right track - it is likely the codec used varies and is unsupported by the default player. Have you tried various players like VLC etc. on the iPad?

 

[Macmonter]

I believe you're on the right track - it is likely the codec used varies and is unsupported by the default player. Have you tried various players like VLC etc. on the iPad?

I checked the codec for each of the iPad unplayable vids (total 17 unplayable, 85 playable). Two unplayable had H.264 codec (8.54 GB and 5.42 GB) and 15 unplayable had DV/DVCPRO codec of various sizes. It appears that the iPad does NOT play DV/DVCPRO vids or H.264 vids greater than 5 GB. My 11 year old Mac Pro and 7 year old Mac Mini would play all 202 vids without needing conversion. Too bad my 1 year old iPad Pro isn’t as versatile!

 

[sparksd]

I checked the codec for each of the iPad unplayable vids (total 17 unplayable, 85 playable). Two unplayable had H.264 codec (8.54 GB and 5.42 GB) and 15 unplayable had DV/DVCPRO codec of various sizes. It appears that the iPad does NOT play DV/DVCPRO vids or H.264 vids greater than 5 GB. My 11 year old Mac Pro and 7 year old Mac Mini would play all 202 vids without needing conversion. Too bad my 1 year old iPad Pro isn’t as versatile!

No, I can definitely play H.264 > 5GB on all of my devices.