Ipad movies from an external drive

[jonean02]

I have too many movie clips on my ipad and need to delete some. I have copied them to my laptop but want to be certain I can reimport them if the needs must. However, In testing moving a movie clip back to the ipad it can't seem to make it play. How do I manage this? Does anybody know? Or even a different way to manage the limited storage problem. Thoughts would be very much appreciated.

 

[dhewson777]

What app are you using for playback, and what is the source of the movies? How are you getting them onto your iPad initially and how are you removing them?

 

[jonean02]

Thanks for replying. These are movie clips I take with the ipad I.e. of the family. I copied them to my laptop simply with a USB connection though windows viewing the ipad as an external drive. So before I delete the clips from the ipad to create so room, I tested if I could drop them back onto the ipad and view them simply from the ipad photos app as I normally do and they can't be found to play. I read about ifile, but there are many apps for this. I have tried a couple but they are a bit confusing and don't seem to work.

What I really want is to move my movie clips from the ipad to an external drive and then be able to play them directly from there without restoring them either through a cable or wifi, but without the expense of buying a specific ipad only external drive.

Hope I have given you enough information to help.

 

[drb_52]

I believe if you put them in iTunes, you can reimport them as you need. You should be able to drag and drop them inti iTunes on your computer. A better option might be to have iTunes sync with the folder automatically.

 

[mrcupu]

i have some trouble as you and seems that the only way to avoid it is to just streaming those movies instead put it inside your ipad you can try free app vlc streaming it can convert the movie directly when streaming and if you like it just pay two bucks to get more features and if you dont like it just delete the free version you got nothing to lose :thumbs:

 

[jonean02]

Thanks I will givethat a try. However, if I sync the iPad with the laptop AND I had deleted the from the iPad, does it either replace them through the sync or remove them from the external drive? I thought the sync kept a balanced view of the two drives? But then I am not that good a user to really understand, so appreciate your views.

 

[jonean02]

Thanks. I will look that app up and see if it works for me.

 

[dhewson777]

Actually, with the right third party app and the external drive set-up correctly, you can stream them over your wifi to your iPad.

The external drive will need to be shared, ie. accessible on your network, so you could set-up a windows share, or set-up a media server software on your PC to serve it out to devices, like DLNA. There is whole threads on those subjects so I'll let you dig around to see what suits your situation.

 

[AQ_OC]

You can get an air stash, which uses an SD card. It has a usb port. It has its own wifi so you can put the clips on the SD, put that in the Air stash, log into the Air stash, then play the clips. YOu can save photos to it and many apps can read/write from the device. It can be used with a laptop, Android or iOS device. This thing is super small and chargers on any usb charger.

Or you can a Gauntlet Node, which is also a wifi drive with similar features. You can install a 2.5 inch hard drive in this, so you can control the amount of storage you have.

Seagate makes a similar thing 500GB called a Goflex Satellite. They have a new 1TB drive on the market too. Kingston makes a similar device too (Wi-Drive?). There is also the iUSBport line of devices.

These types of devices are becoming the new thing for mobile device wifi storage. None of these are iPad specific (with the possible exception of the Kingston), by the way. It would be silly to do that since these are wifi devices. No reason to tie them to one platform.

 

[jonean02]

Thanks to everybody I have now solved the problem. I downloaded the free app Air playit HD to the iPad, also downloaded the same app for my PC (you can also get a Mac version), set it up which was really easy. You tell the app which folder in the laptop you movies, pictures or music are in and then on the iPad app you can see all the content and play as required. So happy . I can now delete from the iPad as required. Thanks all.