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Take Control of Media on Your iPad
Make the most of your iPad media machine!
It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's an iPad, and while it may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, the iPad is a lean, mean, media machine for reading books, listening to music, watching videos, viewing photos, controlling iTunes and your Apple TV, and more. Jeff Carlson, our most media-savvy author, explains how to purchase or acquire ebooks to read in iBooks and helps you understand the subtleties of iBooks. After that, you'll find advice and steps for listening to audio in the iPod app, including how to control the playback interface and complex tasks like creating smart playlists. Then it's on to figuring out how put videos on your iPad, using the Videos app, and streaming video from the Web. Next up are photos—learning how to store photos on the iPad, use the Photos app, set up the iPad as a digital picture frame, and sharing photos and videos. The ebook also covers how to use an iPad as a remote control for iTunes, an Apple TV, and other consumer electronics.
More Info
Contents & Intro
What’s New
FAQ
Blog
You'll learn how to:
Mind your media: Get an overview of options for moving media to your iPad.
Read ebooks: Find free and commercial ebooks to read in iBooks, transfer ebooks from a desktop computer to iBooks, and learn how to use iBooks so you can go beyond flipping pages. And, if iBooks isn't your cup of tea or if you want to include multiple ebook-reading apps in your repertoire, or read magazines or comics, you'll find ideas for a few third-party options.
Listen to audio: Jeff covers the basics of controlling your music and podcasts in the iPod app, and he gives steps for creating regular and smart playlists, and for using Apple's handy Genius feature. You'll also learn how to stream music directly to your iPad with a third-party app.
Watch video: Find directions for adding media to your iPad, whether you want to buy it from Apple or add it from an independent source. Specific topics include iTunes Store rentals, ripping DVDs, exporting from iMovie, a GoodReader workaround, and an SD card tip. You'll also learn how to output from your iPad to a television, and get ideas for streaming video to your iPad, with quick looks at YouTube, Netflix, and Safari.
View photos: Benefit from Jeff's experience as an enthusiastic amateur photographer as he discusses moving photos (and certain videos) to an iPad from an external device or from a computer. Jeff also covers how to share your photos once they are on the iPad, whether with a slideshow, Picture Frame mode, or via email attachment. You'll even learn what happens when you transfer a raw image file from an external device to an iPad.
Control your electronics: If you truly want to use your iPad as a big iPod touch, here's one opportunity—as a big remote control. Jeff shows you how to use Apple's Remote app to control iTunes on a computer or to control an Apple TV, and he offers ideas for how to trick out your iPad so it can serve as a remote control for other consumer electronic devices like TVs and stereos.
Book Info
123 pages
Version 1.1
Updated 09-Jul-10
4.1 MB download
ISBN: 1615420533
Free sample with Table of Contents, Intro, Quick Start, and section starts.
About the Author
Jeff Carlson is the Managing Editor of TidBITS, a columnist for the Seattle Times, a frequent contributor to Macworld, and the author of best-selling books on the Mac, video editing, digital photography, and, in earlier incarnations, Web design and Palm organizers. He consumes almost too much coffee. Almost.
This book delves deep into an area where the iPad excels: playing media of all types, from movies, music, and photos to ebooks and up-to-the-minute news sources. It was written by Jeff Carlson, edited by Tonya Engst, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc.
Introduction
One early criticism of the iPad—before the tablet had even been released—was that it seemed to be a decent media player, a “big iPod touch”... but not much else. It played movies and photo slideshows, let you buy and read electronic books, and played music (oh, and managed your email, browsed the Web, organized your calendars and contacts, and did “real work” with Apple’s iWork apps for iPad, but those examples were usually glossed over because they didn’t fit the big-iPod narrative).
Of course, there’s more to the iPad than that, as you know if you own or have used one. The iPad is a bold step forward in terms of how we interact with computers and our important digital information. But you know what? It’s also a pretty darn good media player. The large and incredibly responsive touchscreen makes a huge difference in how you consume digital entertainment—it’s literally there at your fingertips, not once removed by a mouse, trackpad, or keyboard. The compact size makes it possible to watch a movie on an airplane without worrying if the person in the seat in front of you will lean back and crush your laptop. And the 8–10 hour battery life means you won’t be frantic to find a power outlet as you near the end of your book or film.
As you might expect, Apple has done a great job of making the iPad friendly to everyone without requiring a lot of technical knowledge to operate. But in the realm of handling media, you may find yourself in nooks where the right approach isn’t obvious. How can you put your DVD movies on the iPad? What if you want to include your own home movies? What’s the best way to read magazines, newspapers, and other newsy content? How can you import digital photos and upload them to a photo-sharing site without making a trip to a desktop computer? What’s the optimal way to get the most media onto a 16 GB iPad?
This book answers all these questions and much more, and it helps you get the most out of your media.
Quick Start to Media on Your iPad
"Media" encompasses a lot of different materials, so don't feel as though you need to read the book from front to back if, for example, you're initially interested in making musical playlists on your iPad. Come back here (or visit the bookmarks list or table of contents) to jump to any topic.
Mind your media:
Learn the main routes for getting media onto your iPad: Transfer in iTunes and Move Media Wirelessly.
Take steps to fit more media files onto smaller-capacity iPad models and Give Your Media Room to Stretch Out.
Read electronic books:
Download the free iBooks app and then Download Books from the iBookstore.
If you're on a budget or just want to give iBooks a try without spending money at first, Find and Download Free Books.
Learn how to Add Your Own Books, plus how to manage and Organize Your Library, and then crack that virtual spine and Read a Book.
There are more apps for reading than just iBooks. Find out about More Reading Options.
Listen to audio:
Is the iPad just a big iPod touch? In one respect, yes: playing music and other audio. First, learn how to Put Audio on the iPad.
Next, understand the playback controls used to Control Audio Playback, and the (many) steps required to create a Regular Playlist and a Genius Playlist.
Stream Audio over the Internet to the iPad, no sync cable required.
Watch movies, TV shows, and other video:
Fill the device with video, whether you Rent or Buy on the iPad from Apple or Sync Videos from iTunes.
Already own a library of movies or TV shows? Encode Videos from Your DVDs.
Use the Videos App to watch your flicks, or Stream Video over the air with apps such as Air Video, YouTube, Netflix, and Safari.
View photos and slideshows:
Learn about the many ways to Put Photos on the iPad—including directly from a digital camera or memory card.
View Photos and Videos in albums or as slideshows, and even Use the iPad as a Photo Frame.
Photos deserve to be seen, so don't forget to Share Photos and Videos. Also learn the workarounds to Share Better-Quality Photos and Videos.
Control media playback from the iPad:
Use Your iPad as a Remote to control iTunes media playback on a computer, or control an Apple TV, using the free Remote app from Apple.
Learn about Other Remote Apps that let you control other devices, including ones that use infrared (IR) receivers.
What's New in Version 1.1
As promised in version 1.0, which was released early, this version 1.1 adds two major sections: Watch Video and View Photos. Other important changes include these:
The Read Books and Other Text section now discusses reading news, magazines, and comics on the iPad, and it details the many changes in iBooks 1.1, which was released after the initial edition of this book.
References to iPhone OS 4 are updated as needed to iOS 4 throughout.
Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch?
There are lots of great ways to read PDFs on these devices. For more details, please read our latest Device Advice.
Ask a Question
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In the Photos section of the just-released version 1.1 of Take Control of Media on Your iPad, I mentioned a great utility for locating stock photos for research (see the sidebar on page 94). There was one catch, however: Apple had not yet approved the app. Sure enough, the day the updated version of the ebook was ready, Viewfinder made its appearance at the App Store (that link opens a Web page and iTunes directly). The $9.99 app from Connected Flow can not only search Flickr for images, but also filter ones that have Creative Commons licenses in use. I've used the Mac version of Viewfinder, which is far easier than plodding through pages and pages of Flickr search results pages on the Web.
YouTube has introduced a mobile version of its site at m.youtube.com. According to YouTube, the mobile version's features are more in alignment with the full Web site's features and the mobile site does not use Flash, so all the videos should play on the iPad. If you decide to try the site, note that once a video is playing, you can access the playback controls by tapping the playing video. Once you've done this, the video plays in an iPad-like interface, complete with playback controls. Rotate the iPad to the landscape (horizontal) position to view the largest image.
The mobile version may have more to do clashing titans of the tech industry (YouTube's parent company is Google) than with user's needs, but it certainly offers iPad users another option for viewing YouTube videos.
If you like the mobile site and want to view it quickly from your Home screen, you can make a "Web clip" of the site: Go to the site in Safari, tap the plus (+) button on the toolbar, and then Tap Add to Home Screen. Then, name the clip and tap the Add button. The iPad will respond by switching to the Home screen and showing an icon for the clip you created. Tap the icon to quickly return to the mobile YouTube site.
If you'd like to read more about the mobile YouTube site, here are two good resources:
by Jeff Carlson
Jeff Carlson is the Managing Editor of TidBITS, a columnist for the Seattle Times, a frequent contributor to Macworld, and the author of best-selling books on the Mac, video editing, digital photography, and, in earlier incarnations, Web design and Palm organizers. He consumes almost too much coffee. Almost.