8:32 PM
Kakrona Chan
If you thought Apple’s more relaxed App Store policies were limited to Google Voice apps, think again.
The popular open source media player VLC now has its own free iPad app [iTunes link] available in the App Store
.VLC Media Player
lets iPad owners play back all kinds of video content natively on their tablet devices.
As a media player, the iPad is almost — but not entirely — perfect out of the box. Although Apple supports QuickTime (.MOV), MPEG-4 H.264 (.MP4 and .MPV) and certain video formats from digital cameras, playing back .MKV files, or .AVI files encoded with Xvid or Divx, hasn’t been a real possibility in the native media player.
.VLC Media Player lets iPad owners play back all kinds of video content natively on their tablet devices.As a media player, the iPad is almost — but not entirely — perfect out of the box. Although Apple supports QuickTime (.MOV), MPEG-4 H.264 (.MP4 and .MPV) and certain video formats from digital cameras, playing back .MKV files, or .AVI files encoded with Xvid or Divx, hasn’t been a real possibility in the native media player.
Not only could those files not be synced via iTunes, playing them back from the Internet (viaDropbox or other options) just hasn’t been feasible. Media server solutions like Air Video [iTunes link] aside, playing content you already have downloaded on your Mac or PC on your iPad has usually required converting file formats first.
VLC Media Player solves this problem. Although VLC isn’t the first third-party app to take on media codec support (CineXPlayer [iTunes link] was released earlier in the summer), it is free and it carries the well-respected VLC name.
We uploaded some of our media to the app (using the iTunes file transfer process) and then tried it out.
First, the good news: An .AVI of the most recent episode of Mad Men played back brilliantly. It looked just like watching the AVI on a laptop or a television set. Sound was solid, scrubbing through the file was quick and artifacting wasn’t any more pronounced than the original.
Now the bad news: An old .MKV of The Office utterly failed. To its credit, VLC warned me that my iPad may be too slow to play back the file. And I can believe that. Depending on the bitrate and compression settings, .MKV files can be problematic even on more powerful equipment. Still, anyone hoping to watch their higher-quality .MKV files on the iPad are going to be disappointed. We haven’t had the chance to run any test footage through Handbrake to see if we can produce playable .MKV files, but at this point, H.264 or Xvid AVI is where we would suggest focusing your video efforts.
Check out our hands-on gallery to see VLC for iPad in action. Have you used it yet? Please share your experiences in the comments.
This is the "About" screen.
This is how files are displayed in portrait mode.
This is how files are displayed in landscape. Note the "HD" distinction on the .MKV file.
VLC warns that the iPad may be too slow for this file.
It's right! Aside from distorted sound, the video screen is blank!
Scrubbing forward does bring up video but it's choppy, unplayable and paired with distorted or no audio. Playback fail.
Posted in: Apple
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