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iPad Pro IPadOS Files App Quick Look for Videos

Ivor Bigunn

Ivor Bigunn

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 13, 2015
20
49
Hi!

I just wanted to say that the Quick Look feature in the iPadOS Beta release is the most powerful video playing software I have encountered for the iPad pro, and I have used VLC, OPlayer HD, etc.

I say this because you can pinch any video to zoom in, using 2 fingers, and then drag the zoomed window to any part of the full video frame. I have not seen that ability in any other player!

regards

IB
 
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NPlayer definitely allows you to do this. And I’ve used a few others in the past that have allowed this too. I know a lot don’t though.
 
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Ivor Bigunn said:
Hi!

I just wanted to say that the Quick Look feature in the iPadOS Beta release is the most powerful video playing software I have encountered for the iPad pro, and I have used VLC, OPlayer HD, etc.

I say this because you can pinch any video to zoom in, using 2 fingers, and then drag the zoomed window to any part of the full video frame. I have not seen that ability in any other player!

regards

IB
Click to expand...

I do not have the iPad OD installed so cannot see it, Can you post a video of that doing that ? Would appreciate it !
 
Well i tried to make a video as requested, but as you see, i am not much of a videographer.!!



This iz a simple phone video of the ipad screen. All zooming and panning is by Files App Quick Look.

I also realise that Files will not play AVI and WMV files, so i guess it is like Quicktime.

IB
 
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Ivor Bigunn said:
I also realise that Files will not play AVI and WMV files, so i guess it is like Quicktime.
Click to expand...

Yeah there's a pretty large class of files that iOS will not play by default - it's a big part of the reason why I still prefer to use a third-party player like nPlayer.
 
Hi!
Well I see that masotime is correct! NPlayer has this feature also.

I had to test it myself, as the developer does not seem to mention it anywhere.

and nPlayer is not free.

so I still think that this is a cool feature for Files App to have.

On a related subject, does anyone know the real difference between hardware and software playback?? I see no difference in quality, but I guess hardware uses less resources??

rgds

IB
 
Ivor Bigunn said:
On a related subject, does anyone know the real difference between hardware and software playback?? I see no difference in quality, but I guess hardware uses less resources??
Click to expand...

Hardware playback definitely uses less resources - this matters most when playing videos that use the resource-intensive codec HEVC / h265 / x265. For AVC / h264 videos, the resource usage is not significant even for software playback.

To clarify - "hardware" means that the device (i.e. iPad) will use a specialized hardware inside the microprocessor to decode the compressed video, instead of software which relies on generic hardware to do processing.

You'll definitely run into issues if you try to e.g. playback HEVC 4k 60fps content using software playback - this is particularly true for GoPRO Hero 7 Black 4K60 footage.

The Quicktime / iOS built-in player will playback GoPro files mentioned above using Hardware by default anyway - you don't need nPlayer for that, but if you have e.g. MKV files with HEVC, you're going to need a third party player.
 
ok thanks. That is very clear.

But one other big advantage of the Files App as a video player is that it can play mp4 videos directly off a USB stick, or a externally-powered hard disk, which a Player App cannot. You would have to copy the files into the Player App with the Files App first.


regards

IB
 
Last edited:
Ivor Bigunn said:
ok thanks. That is very clear.

But one other big advantage of the Files App as a video player is that it can play mp4 videos directly off a USB stick, or a externally-powered hard disk, which a Player App cannot.

regards

IB
Click to expand...

That will likely change with wider adoption of iPadOS on its official release. I use nPlayer - my favorite - & Infuse to stream video from wireless-attached storage (NAS, FileHub, etc). I like the additional control over audio (e.g., sound boost) and video (e.g., saturation) that they provide.
 
sparksd said:
That will likely change with wider adoption of iPadOS on its official release. I use nPlayer - my favorite - & Infuse to stream video from wireless-attached storage (NAS, FileHub, etc). I like the additional control over audio (e.g., sound boost) and video (e.g., saturation) that they provide.
Click to expand...

That will definitely change. I already have it in my own apps - it’s very easy to do, in fact, I don’t think they’ll need to do anything but rebuild against iOS 13 given that most of them handle things like this already.
 
That is a valid point that sparksd and 007p make. I understood from the Apple announcement that they will allow ipad apps to work with files in "other" locations, not only sandboxed.

But then won't an ipad effectively have a File System??

Rgds

IB

007p said:
That will definitely change. I already have it in my own apps - it’s very easy to do, in fact, I don’t think they’ll need to do anything but rebuild against iOS 13 given that most of them handle things like this already.
Click to expand...
 
Ivor Bigunn said:
But then won't an ipad effectively have a File System??
Click to expand...

The iPad has always had a filesystem - iOS is based on Unix - jailbroken iOS devices have direct access to the underlying filesystem (I know because I used to jailbreak my iPad).

What's changed is the degree of access that Apple has allowed developers to access externally mounted volumes. Normally it's so tightly sandboxed that you need to copy files over directly to each App's sandbox, but with the Share sheet / actions, and iOS 13, apps will be able to directly access files on external drives.

All this is a good thing. Apple tried all sorts of ways like AirDrop / iCloud to share files, but it made for really awkward workflows. This direct access is still the better way for most people with external drives, and improves the workflow vastly for the iPad Pros with USB-C.
 
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