Using ubuntu, how to enjoy the ipad...

[DrHouse]

Hi,

I am an Ubuntu user at home, and I have of course iPad but also an iPhone. The iPhone is currently well supported under Ubuntu for music/videos/photos management. For the iPad, that is another story (at least until the support is available).

So how to put some media on the iPad if you are using Ubuntu? Here is what I do...

I have setup a PC running Ubuntu and the upnp mediatomb server. It is quite easy to install and configure using the package manager. Then, on the iPad, I use a upnp client, Fusion Stream, to connect to my server. Actually, you don't really need a dedicated server as you can simply use your laptop to host your medias...

The great thing is that your media will be organized via the mediatomb server, and Fusion Stream gives you the possibility to download a local copy of the media on your iPad.

Since I have 2 iOS devices, I wanted to have a single source of media to avoid keeping my movies on each device. So having them in my media server and watching them in streaming over wifi makes it easy to manage the movies.

So, once everything is setup, I just use Fusion Stream to connect to my media server and watch my movies when I want to. And having a tv out cable, I can watch those movies on my tv also. Oh, yeah, since Fusion Stream does not support tv out, I simply use safari on the web UI of mediatomb to stream the movie to my tv. Works really well.

The fun thing about this setup is I do not have to sync my iOS devices at all. As everything is done on the computer.

For video transcoding, I use FFmpeg (compiled from the repo sources). But there are a lot of software that can do this....

A quick how to:
1- install mediatomb
2- install Fusion Stream in iPad
3- configure mediatomb from the web interface to add media folders
4- connect on server using Fusion Stream and browse/download/stream your media files

Have a once day!

 

[kmshark]

Hello, I am trying to get mediatomb going for our iPad as well but I'm having trouble with the transcoding settings to allow viewing of my MKV files. Can you provide a copy of your config.xml file or just a copy/paste of your transcoding section?

 

[DrHouse]

Hello, I am trying to get mediatomb going for our iPad as well but I'm having trouble with the transcoding settings to allow viewing of my MKV files. Can you provide a copy of your config.xml file or just a copy/paste of your transcoding section?

Hi,

That's the holy Grail of mediatomb and iOS devices. Nobody could find the right configuration for live transcoding. But you have several options:

1- use Airplay as a client on your iPad as it is able to read almost any format of video. It does require a bit more battery, but it works. There are other clients like airplay in the app store by the way...
2- Transcode everything using Handbrake into iPad/iPhone format. Works really great.
3- look for tversity, it's a windows server but works great under Wine. It does the live transcoding and you have to use the client for that server in the app store

Since I now have also an apple tv, I simply installed a winXp desktop as a server using iTunes but discovered lately that iTunes will work under Wine for home sharing (synch does not work).

So I ended up transcoding everything into mp4 format with Handbrake. This ensure maximum quality and compatibility. Also, it's easier on the battery usage. And if you require to have local movies on your device while traveling, you can still use Fusion Store as a client of mediatomb. But I tried the beta3 of Ubuntu 11.4 and found out that USB transfer for applications is now working as in iTunes so you can simply use any file manager application on you device that can read movies, and transfer them thru USB. Really faster than wifi!

Hope this helped...

 

[Demandarin]

Or u could just jailbreak iPad, get Ifiles, the PC/Mac style file explorer for iPad. It will let u transfer whatever files u want to the iPad without need of iTunes. As far as formatting/transcoding goes, just download one of the 3rd party apps from app store that plays all other movie formats like CineXplayer or AV player or VLC(only avai. In cydia store n free). Then just use Ifiles to copy/cut/Paste those movie files into the media palyer of ur choice, app's document folder. So it then can be seen and played once u open it up. Just another method that might be easier. I don't have ubuntu but I never use iTunes either for media transfer so thought this might help.

 

[DrHouse]

Or u could just jailbreak iPad, get Ifiles, the PC/Mac style file explorer for iPad. It will let u transfer whatever files u want to the iPad without need of iTunes. As far as formatting/transcoding goes, just download one of the 3rd party apps from app store that plays all other movie formats like CineXplayer or AV player or VLC(only avai. In cydia store n free). Then just use Ifiles to copy/cut/Paste those movie files into the media palyer of ur choice, app's document folder. So it then can be seen and played once u open it up. Just another method that might be easier. I don't have ubuntu but I never use iTunes either for media transfer so thought this might help.

Actually, you don't even need to jailbreak to do that. If you use oplayer for example, you can download/transfer any media via wifi and also thru USB with the new version of Ubuntu 11.4. OPlayer can read almost all formats...

In the past, i've jail broke my iPhone 3GS only to find out that is no real need or really cool apps available. And with the new release of iOS 4.3, I really don't see the use of doing that anymore.

My setup is quite handy as I have an iPhone, an iPad and an apple tv 2. It's far more easier to use what is available than go thru the hurdles of jail breaking.

 

[Demandarin]

Or u could just jailbreak iPad, get Ifiles, the PC/Mac style file explorer for iPad. It will let u transfer whatever files u want to the iPad without need of iTunes. As far as formatting/transcoding goes, just download one of the 3rd party apps from app store that plays all other movie formats like CineXplayer or AV player or VLC(only avai. In cydia store n free). Then just use Ifiles to copy/cut/Paste those movie files into the media palyer of ur choice, app's document folder. So it then can be seen and played once u open it up. Just another method that might be easier. I don't have ubuntu but I never use iTunes either for media transfer so thought this might help.

Actually, you don't even need to jailbreak to do that. If you use oplayer for example, you can download/transfer any media via wifi and also thru USB with the new version of Ubuntu 11.4. OPlayer can read almost all formats...

In the past, i've jail broke my iPhone 3GS only to find out that is no real need or really cool apps available. And with the new release of iOS 4.3, I really don't see the use of doing that anymore.

My setup is quite handy as I have an iPhone, an iPad and an apple tv 2. It's far more easier to use what is available than go thru the hurdles of jail breaking.

I definitely see ur point. Not everyone runs ubuntu though. You know only mostly tech heads use that. I could only wish to run ubuntu as my desktop is a dinosaur compared to stuff now. That's why I love the jailbreak method of moving things around without needing a PC. I can even download straight from the web on my iPad then move it to the proper folder using Ifiles. The more options the better! I thought apple took down player also. I have cinexplayer, VLC, and av player. I'll look for player again as I remember I had it when it first cam out but was kind of buggy. Maybe now it's a decent media player to have in the arsenal.

 

[appleeater]

Connecting my non-jb iPad (2) to my Ubuntu 10.10 pc results in opening a photo viewer and the DCIM folder on the iPad is shown in nautilus (the gnome file browser), as it were a photo camera.
Really fun !

 

[susja]

Folks,
I also use Ubuntu 11.10 to communicate with my iPad.
But the question I have for you guys is if you could recommend some app I could use to remote control my Ubuntu from I iPad?
I mean that from Android devices I use TeamViewer to control PC but not sure about iPad.
Any ideas?

 

[DrHouse]

Folks,
I also use Ubuntu 11.10 to communicate with my iPad.
But the question I have for you guys is if you could recommend some app I could use to remote control my Ubuntu from I iPad?
I mean that from Android devices I use TeamViewer to control PC but not sure about iPad.
Any ideas?

You could simply use a VNC client to connect to the remote desktop of Ubuntu. There are a lot of VNC apps in the AppStore .

VicoPad addict!

 

[joeyteel]

Folks,
I also use Ubuntu 11.10 to communicate with my iPad.
But the question I have for you guys is if you could recommend some app I could use to remote control my Ubuntu from I iPad?
I mean that from Android devices I use TeamViewer to control PC but not sure about iPad.
Any ideas?

If you're already using TeamViewer, you can use that. I use it from my iPad to access my Ubuntu desktop so I don't have to punch extra holes in my NAT configuration

 

[DrHouse]

Some updates for folks using Ubuntu and the iPad...

I realized lately that I had bought the app AirPlayer which can play any format connected to an uPNP server. As stated in the original post, I was using Mediatomb on my Ubuntu laptop.

I've discovered Rygel in the default repositories of Ubuntu packages. It is easier to use than Mediatomb as you simply install related packages for Rygel (Don't forget the rygel-preferences tools) and you are good to go.

AirPlayer is able to directly broadcast to the Apple TV any media in MP4 format. Basically, My iPad/iPhone becomes a big remote control to play those movies on my Apple TV...

There is nothing to configure, beside if you want more folders than "Music/Pictures/Videos" and takes about 2 minutes to install.

That's all folks!

VicoPad addict!

 

[DrHouse]

IOS 6 is out, but not on the iPad 1, so I could not test this new version on my Ubuntu laptop. But I did it with my iPhone 4S to see if the new iOS would require more magic tricks from the Linux community...

And the answer is no. It just works as it was before, at least with my iPhone 4S which leads me to assume that the compatibility is not broken with this major update.