INTERACT FORUM
Devices => Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod, Airplay => Topic started by: Z0001 on March 22, 2014, 01:04:04 am
-
Hi
I have all my blu ray and DVD in mkv format for playing on MC but I want to put some on an iPad (64GB) for the kids to watch. Quality can be substantially reduced to save disk space.
What do people use to achieve this? A GUI approach preferred. Happy to pay for a product if it does a good job.
Presumably once I have done this is just a simple export to iTunes in order to sync to the iPad.
Appreciate any ideas or experiences.
Z
-
I've just found the convert format, which seems to suggest from the options available that MC will reduce resolution from say 1080p to a lower number.
I'm guessing this will do what I want and save disk space?
If so cool!
Z
-
You know about Handbrake? I don't know what platforms you are using.
-
I have heard about handbrake, but not used it. I have W7 x64, only MC and TMT6 run other machine.
Does MC do the shrink and conversion?
Cheers
Z
-
You can use Library Tools > Convert Format, and you'll have to select the appropriate conversion for your iPad (I'm not sure which option to select, as I haven't played with the new video conversion stuff, and have used Handbrake for iDevices. Handbrake has nice, easy to understand profiles for iDevices). Try MC's convert first, and if that doesn't produce what you want, try Handbrake. I'm sure glynor will have some good advice here.
http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php
-
Both MC and handbrake will likely take a long time to convert/shrink your MKVs to iPad format, whereas in reality, the chances are that the video is already h264 (most MKVs are) and the ipad will handle those just fine (with a few caveats)
If this is the case, you simply need to remux (re-package) to the right container (mp4, m4v, etc), and potentially select or convert the audio stream (it won't do the higher end multichannel stuff - DTS etc) to something the ipad will play; e.g. 2 channel AAC.
I'm not aware of the equivalent windows tool (although I'm sure it exists) for doing this, but in the mac world "subler" is the go-to app for this kind of thing.
It also grabs/embeds metadata/subtitles for your media, and imports into iTunes for you ready for transfer, and I highly recommend it :)
Simply stripping out the high quality multichannel audio can significantly reduce the file size too, without losing any image quality.
Alternatively, if you have a few spare dollars, you could try AVPlayerHD on the iPad from the app store.
It plays MKVs directly, and often is able to do h264 hardware decoding just as the apple video app does.
It also streams videos from your PC too if you are capable of setting up an ftp server and are happy watching at home on your wifi connection.
It did recently drop support for DTS audio though (due to licensing costs) but handles AC3 just fine.
-
I can recommend VidCoder for this exact purpose. It is Handbrake with a very easy to use front GUI. It is free and gets updated frequently.
http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/
I use it to make movie copies for my iPad and it works great on any file format I have thrown at it. Just pick the file, select a profile and go.
-
I can recommend VidCoder for this exact purpose. It is Handbrake with a very easy to use front GUI. It is free and gets updated frequently.
http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/
I use it to make movie copies for my iPad and it works great on any file format I have thrown at it. Just pick the file, select a profile and go.
Agreed. Found mention of Vidcoder on Interact recently. For a non-sophisticated user it leaves Handbrake spitting out the dust from its wake.