I recently got some old VHS tapes transferred to MP4 format, while I can download and watch them on my android tablet (a Samsung Nexus) my mum would like to be able to watch them on her iPad.
I know a bit about computers but not that much, my mum is 70 and pretty much computer illiterate.
My questions are what is the easiest way for her to watch the videos? I think actually downloading them onto her iPad would take up too much storage so could I keep them on a flash drive and give her that? I believe Apple has its on proprietary format so it would not be a simple matter of plugging it in?
The easiest way would be to connect the iPad to a computer running iTunes and transfer them to the iPad’s internal memory from there (there’s nowhere to plug a USB flash drive into an iPad.)
“MP4” is not a full description of the format. That’s just the container format. The video codec and audio codec contained in the file would also need to be compatible with the iPad. If you use iTunes I believe it will tell you if the file is not compatible without having to load it on the iPad and test it. I don’t think it does transcoding, but there are a number of tools that can do that if necessary. If you upload it to Youtube, Youtube will transcode it if necessary into a format that can be played in any web browser, although the quality might suffer somewhat.
MPEG Streamclip is a free program for Mac that will let you change codecs if necessary. I believe H.264 is one that works well for Macs and for sites like Vimeo. You can also limit the file size easily–for example, free Vimeo accounts limit you to 500MB of uploads/week; if you’ve got 505 MB you’d like to upload, it’s easy to change it to say 490 MB with a little bit of compression.
Yes, it takes a little learning, but I’m far from a genius and I use it successfully. You can also easily do some limited editing like chopping off the first 20 seconds before the action begins.
By the way, I find Vimeo easier and better than YouTube in part because privacy is easier to manage, but YMMV.
