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Reasons to Jailbrake my Apple iPad: Watching Videos

My iPad usage scenario

This week I had again a little discussion with my colleagues about our iPads (everybody has it).

I complained that I could not view my recorded videos via an USB stick on the iPad during air travel. Which means spontanously copying 3 videos in the early morning onto the USB stick, jump into the taxi cab and up to the airport. I can do this with my Android tablet from Acer, which has a normal sized USB host jack.

My colleague said: you can do this easily with your iPad if you buy a “iPad Camera Connection Kit”. The kit contains one adapter for USB and one adapter for SD cards and costs EUR 29.–

Next day I bought that “iPad Camera Connection Kit” It did not work exactely that way:

My experiences with the Camera Connection Kit

1) If plug in a (normal USB 2.0 stick (flash memory), if constantly says: “your device consumes to much power” – (apples says the USB connection is designed to connect to cameras) –> “Gerät kann nicht benutzt werden. Das angeschlossene USB-Gerät benötigt zu viel Strom.”

One of my USB sticks worked with the Apple camera connection kit: Hama 16 GB consuming 100 mA Kinston 1GB using 140 mA did not work TrekStor 4 GB using 200 mA did not work CnMemory 16 GB using 480 mA did not work From the internet I heard the TransCend JetFlash500 32 GB will use only 100 mA —–> I will try that

2) If I use the SD-adapter it works in principle – meaning no power problems, but….

3) The iPad screen now shows me the contens of my SD card, but not all the contents, but only file types Apple wants to play with….e.g. .jpg .mov .m4v .mp4 ….

4) Filenames must look as if they come from a camera i.e. 8 characters including numbering e.g. IMG_001.JPG DSC_011.JPG P1234567.JPG P1234568.MOV P123456X.JPG

4) You then have to import the files form the SD card into the iPad, which means: copy i.e. it takes time and space (much if videos) and it means that the files are copied into the closed space of a certain application (Foto App) that Apple has decided these types of files must go.

My conclusions

The iPad import takes some time to recognize all eligible files on the SD card. This can be confusing, because sometimes a certain file is not shown. but when you try it once more it does show up in the “to be imported” list.

The iPad import looks only into the DCIM folder, other folders are ignored (?)

Files need to be renamed into non-descriptive 8 character names

The iPad import ignores file types like: .mp3 .avi

The iPad import copies the files to: /var/mobile/Media/DCIM ==> this takes time and eats-up precious iPad storage

Jailbreake & iFile

iFile has build-in viewers for fotos, videos etc.

If you want to use different Apps for viewing, you can copy your media files to the wanted application. Or you can put shortcuts there. Example to follow…

SD Cards work very well with the Camera Connection Set, but this Adapter is restricted to One SD Card at a Time, consequently you can Not copy Files from one SD Card to an other- Say in Order to do back-ups of photos durring a vacation or so.

The USB adapter of the Camera Connection Set offers in Prínciple more Flexibility, since you can Plugin a USB Hub….but such an USB hub needs to be “active” meaning powered by at least 2.1 Amp….

AcePlayer

has: E3DE36E4-2781-4B9E-B698-9D7748922BFB

Put your videos into the subfolder “documents”

CineXPlayer

has 926AE9Fe-8D65-40E2-A719-B492305C22D2

Put your videos into the subfolder “Documents”

SongBird

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