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iPad Pro Copying videos to iPad

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kat.hayes

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 10, 2011
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I have an iPad Pro that has never been connected to a Mac. I want to copy a bunch of videos to it for a trip. What is the best way to do this? If I airdrop them won’t they go into Photos? I don’t want them syncing to my other devices. The videos take up too much storage for iCloud, Dropbox, etc. what is easiest way just to get the videos on the iPad?

Thanks.
 
Wow, I’ve always been a VLC user but infuse looks really nice and I love the ability to pull subtitles. That price for the forever Pro version though. Ouch. Going to have to think about it for a bit.
 
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To be honest I think that Airdrop is the best and fastest solution for data transferring. Maybe Airdrop your files to your Photos and then copy them to the Files application?
 
Get a Sandisk iXpand drive if you don't want to lug around a hard drive and/or a wireless hub on your trip. The tradeoff is that the biggest capacity is 256gb but I imagine that's still a good number of videos.
 
I airdropped a some movies to my iPad and they show up in the videos app.

I also airdropped some tv shows, those though I access through the files app.

I'd now like to find a way to transfer them back!
 
A.R.E.A.M. said:
Copying videos to your device are sooo 90s...:p

Get this joker

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P5QDQ1B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And stream the files. I use this all the time for my pad and my phones...
Click to expand...
What's the battery life like on that thing?
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pika2000 said:
I use VLC. VLC on iOS can create a web server where you can just access it through a browser from your PC and drag n drop the videos to it. Make sure both the iPad and PC are on the same network.
Click to expand...
Where do these files end up? (Are they only accessible from VLC on the iPad, or do they show up in the TV app as home videos or whatever?)
 
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rumz said:
Where do these files end up? (Are they only accessible from VLC on the iPad, or do they show up in the TV app as home videos or whatever?)
Click to expand...
If it's like Infuse ( it is ) which does the same thing, they end up in the app itself. So you don't have to go looking for your videos.
 
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vish26 said:
And so then how do you use this thing ? Save Videos to this thing and then stream from it ? So how is it different from a External Hard Drive with Streaming Capabilities ?
Click to expand...

I have a similar SanDisk wireless media drive and used it for a while but to be honest with the iPad Pro and the drive space available now on iPads these wireless drives don’t make sense anymore

Much easier to just store the movies files directly on the iPad with VLC
 
I'm just getting to the 'how to do this' on my new iPad pro (one of the main reasons to get one is for media), and the suggestion to use infuse was a good one; easy, looks great, files are right there in a nice format, and the fact I can get Japanese subtitles easy for my wife is a real plus.
 
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kat.hayes said:
I have an iPad Pro that has never been connected to a Mac. I want to copy a bunch of videos to it for a trip. What is the best way to do this? If I airdrop them won’t they go into Photos? I don’t want them syncing to my other devices. The videos take up too much storage for iCloud, Dropbox, etc. what is easiest way just to get the videos on the iPad?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of variable in this question, but here are some options (besides the options offered above):
  • Connect it to your computer - iPads don't need to be "synced" with a Mac to copy files over. Connect your iPad to your computer, open iTunes and click on the iPad icon to view. You can view the installed apps and click on the app to load files directly to that app. This is probably the quickest and easiest way for me to transfer files without using Airdrop.
  • Use a Cloud Service as a transfer - You can sign up for a free Box or OneDrive account, copy your videos to the cloud then install the app on the iPad (depending on the service you use, you might be able to access using Files on the iPad). This might take a little longer, but you also have the option of uploading a bunch of files and downloading only those you want at the moment (good if you have limited local storage, but only if you will have a good internet connection at points in your trip).
Honestly my personal preference is just connecting to a computer. It's not fancy, but it gets the job done (you can also use the same method to get files off your iPad as well).
 
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