sleah Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 I know this isn't strictly a Blue Room question, but I'm sure someone will have come across a similar situation and have a simple answer :) I have an event where I need to play a (home brew) video on a loop on a large screen TV. It strikes me (as there is no current cabling infrastructure to it) that playing it on an ipad to a locally attached Apple TV (via adhoc wifi) would be a simple and elegant solution for this one-off event.I have all the kit and the know-how to connect it and make it work. My problem is the very first hurdle of how to get the video file on the darned ipad! This is my first experience of them and to say everything about it in terms of getting data on and off is counter intuative is an understatement.Email is NOT an option and neither is ANYTHING that involves the internet for a ~1gb mp4 file.I have hooked it to my PC with USB and loaded itunes. However itunes will not display a 'library' screen regardless of where I click, all it wants to do is 'go to the itunes store'.I've done 'add folder to library' and 'add file to library' but there is no acknowledgement that the file is added or where. I've created a playlist and clicked 'add to' but that seems to go round in a circle pointing back on itself. Many years ago I used itunes and used to be able to see my local mp3 collection no problem, but even that type function appears to have been removed. Is it possible or am I looking at a hideously expensive but utterless worthless simple internet browser? I suspect a Tesco Huddle is a zillion times more useful! Would a sledgehammer be a good investment to fix the ipda/itunes issues, because that's exactly how I'm feeling. I can get the file on my Android or Windows Phone with no hasstle at all. :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Edwards Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 Without jumping through transcoding hoops and itunes jugggling, I would recommend Airvideo HD. Although primarily a streaming app, you have the option to pull the file down locally on to the ipad or as they call it offline mode. It also has the added bonus of automatically transcoding it as it brings it across if necessary. PS. With the newest OS versions on both devices, you don't need to connect to wifi to airplay. It can do a peer to peer connection now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jevans Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 On the assumption you're on the latest version of iTunes, if you're in the iTunes store then the button to go to the library is in the top right corner. Press that, then in the top left corner there's a dropdown with "Music" etc., you'll want to go to "Movies", the imported videos should be there. If your iPad is plugged in then it should also be visible as an icon in the top right and you should be able to drag and drop your video to it ( I think.) ITunes' interface used to have a proper tree structure down the side and made a lot more sense, but they took that out a couple of years ago for some silly reason... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Edwards Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 Also just thought. All video files manually added to itunes are now placed in 'Home Movies'. You can change it to a 'movie' in the info. There are also 3rd party video players with their own storage area. If you go to your device in itunes and find the 'apps' tab, there is an area at the bottom showing all the apps which have accessible files and you can drag in and out from that window. I think iOS VLC works like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 playing it on an ipad to a locally attached Apple TV (via adhoc wifi) would be a simple and elegant solution for this one-off event.Simple and elegant are two words I'd never use for this, having just this afternoon been trying (and failing) to help a friend connect his mepad to a TV. I'd really recommend a hardware HD player; CPC seems to have stopped selling the one I bought but they're around £30, can play from USB or SD card and can output HDMI, component or composite video. Dead easy to use and just work with no faffing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonny_av Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 +1 for using a hardware player - I have 3 cheap ones at work, £30 or so and you literally plug in your USB stick and off it goes playing out to HDMI. AppleTV and iPads are horrific in the commercial world. I work at an independent school and while I've installed them into classrooms for teachers to use, the amount of downtime and issues means I will never use it for anything show/presentation critical. Peer-to-peer airplaying with iOS 8 appears to be a bit hit and miss, Apple haven't really explained how to do it - but you have to disconnect from any wifi network, turn your bluetooth on and hope for the best. Apparently many have had issues streaming any iTunes content to their AppleTVs using P2P - all it seems good for is mirroring your iOS screen and nothing else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sleah Posted October 2, 2014 Author Share Posted October 2, 2014 I wasn't going to mention Apple TV other than mirroring! One of the biggest disasters to come out of Apple IMHO. It promised so much but delivered so little.... still arguably worth £90 if only for Airplay mirroring :) Gotta admit that is a darn good bit of software that seems to work well. I finally got an mp4 video on the iPad after two attempts with two installs of iTunes on two PC's!!Got it to play too! BUT NO LOOPING! The built in player is so basic it's untrue. Apparently you can 'bodge' it by playing it through iPhoto (yes, a photo app!) and setting the slideshow to loop.However it won't loop it just stops. So.... this spare iPad is going back to the top shelf of the store room to collect dust. I think my £25 Raspberry PI is the hot favourite now :D I do have plenty of good reliable back-up solutions by way of either laptop/"proper" media player etc, but it seemed like a reasonable idea to use some "supposedly" decent kit that's currently collecting dust... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Edwards Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 The main 'problem' with the iPad is that it is not designed to be used as computer replacement. It is for personal media consumption. Why clutter the app with a loop function when 99.9999% of users will never use it. Leave that to 3rd party apps. Apple has succumbed to customer demand and started to bloat their stuff and the once hidden seams are now showing. The stupidly large phone is the most obvious sign. I would only use my iPad as a remote in to the machine that was running the media. iTeleport is an excellent example of this. I second screen to my mac at home via the tinterweb on my phone all the time. Even over 3G it is pretty good and over local wifi is instantaneous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnymurray Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 For looping video on iPad this app has done the job successfully for me: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/cwgs-video-loop-presenter/id423787575?mt=8 When used with restricted access settings you can lock the iPad into a looped video, meaning nobody can stop the video by accident etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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