iMovie for iPad tutorial

DavidAllenWizardgold on 09/10/2012

IMovie for iPad
A good test for a new piece of software you have on your iPad or on your desktop or laptop computer, is to just open it up and see what you can do with it. This approach is especially appealing to those users that don’t like to read manuals. I think it is a good route for testing any new piece of software. You will quickly and easily find out how intuitive the software is in real-world use. If an application is well-designed, then it shouldn’t really be necessary to read a 20 page manual in order to get started. So this is what I did with iMovie for iPad.

A first look at iMovie on iPad

When you first open iMovie, the screen you see is a graphic of a brick wall and above that there is a representation of the signage for a cinema. I suppose it is meant to look a bit like the entrance to a cinema, but it wouldn’t be very successful as you would have to walk straight into a brick wall. Everyone knows that a sign for a cinema is put up, above the entrance doors. The brick wall is there to display the posters for your projects. In some ways, it seems to me that the design of this is just a little bit tacky.
<img style=”display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;” src=”http://nostylus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/iMovie-on-iPad.png” alt=”IMovie on iPad” title=”IMovie on iPad” ” border=”0″ width=”550″ height=”397″ />
In order to get started you tap on the plus symbol at the bottom of the screen You are given a choice of creating a project or a trailer. It seems to me sensible to create the movie first and work on the trailer afterwards. So to get started, I went for creating a project. In the previous article and screencast I showed how it is possible to move video files from the iPhone onto the iPad and I decided to use some of these video clips in my project.

iMovie iPad tutorial – In points and out points

You can see your video clips in the top left section of the application, tap on a video clip to choose it. When you have chosen the video clip that you want to use you see yellow dots on the end markers, moving while the left to choose the in point and the one on the right to choose the out point. I don’t think that the tool to do that is particularly precise, certainly not as good as the methods used in Pinnacle Studio for pre-trimming video clips. Then to move the chosen portion to the timeline you tap on the button with the downward pointing arrow. Your other option is to Tap on button to play it in the viewer. Once you have your clip in the timeline in iMovie for iPad it is then a good time to be more precise with the trimming of your video clip. You can choose your in point much more precisely when you use the pinch gesture to zoom in closer to your clip on the timeline.

How to edit videos on iMovie for iPad

So the thing to do is to throw all of the video clips that you want to use into your timeline and then start to refine it. You can have it set so that it uses a default transition, the cross dissolve. On the other hand you can let it just use straight cuts and put any transitions in afterwards. Whereas in Pinnacle Studio you get a number of transitions to choose from, in iMovie for iPad you essentially only get one plus the specialised transitions found within the templates. In total you only get eight templates and when you choose one of the templates it changes a number of things and not just the transitions. So you could just change a template and mess up a number of settings you have already made and would prefer to keep. In terms of configurability, Pinnacle Studio which used to be called Avid for iPad has much more to offer than does iMovie for iPad.


free applications

iMage Tools

NoStylus iMovie tutorial video

In this first video looking at iMovie on iPad we are just scratching the surface. There will be subsequent videos in which we will go into greater detail with regards what you can do with iMovie for iPad. Check out this video to see how you can use a default Music track to go with the template that you choose. In future NoStylus iMovie tutorial video screencasts on YouTube, I will show you how to add a voice-over or other audio effects or music.

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The NoStylus verdict on iMovie for iPad

Without a doubt, iMovie for iPad is a capable application to use to edit video on your iPad. Some will even say that it is a miracle that it is now possible to edit video on a tablet device. While iMovie is nice to use and also without a doubt will provide you with good quality output, it is not quite up to the standard of Pinnacle Studio. It is always good to see third-party developers giving the Apple coders a run for their money. One would hope that this will lead to further development and improvement of applications like iMovie on iPad. This can only be good news for end-users of iPads. Keep your eyes open for the next iMovie iPad tutorial from NoStylus.

How to add movies to iTunes

DavidAllenWizardgold on 23/12/2011

how to add movies to iTunes

Easy to add movies to iTunes

iTunes will accept a number of different video codecs and there are also quite a few that it will not take. The video codecs that are not accepted tend to be from the Windows universe such as the .avi and the .wmv file types The easiest way to add a movie to iTunes is to do the drag-and-drop from your finder. Just have iTunes in one half of your desktop available to drop into and in the other half have your Finder. In iTunes if you have the movies tab open you can drop the file directly into your collection of movies. If you don’t have your movies section open in your library then you can drop the file into the area in the left hand column into the list underneath the word Library. Just the same as if you were bringing in some music and the music gets put into your music collection, the movie file is put into the correct place with the rest of your movies. It is as simple as that with your files that are .mov or .m4v type of files, but what do you do with one of those weird Windows movie codecs. Don’t worry, you will find a free way to convert video to iPad or iPod, you will be able to add movies to iTunes easily.

How to add movies to iTunes that are .AVI

What you have to do is to convert those movies to a format that is acceptable for iTunes. Basically this will mean that the file will have to be converted to H.264 and if you want to have your movie also put onto your iPod, then you may need to make sure it is of a certain pixel size and also may need to take care of the audio. There are a large number of applications or programs available for use on all platforms, be that Windows, Linux or Mac and the level of complexity for use of these applications varies considerably to use with your iTunes videos. See what you can do with iTunes video to add movies to iTunes or add video to iTunes.

Using the Air Video iPad Solution for Streaming Your Videos to Your iPad

DavidAllenWizardgold on 04/10/2011

Watching videos on your iPad using air video iPad

There are two parts to the solution, for getting your videos off your Mac or your Windows computer. You can download the air video app from the iPad application store within iTunes which costs €3.39, but you also need to go to the website of Air video and download the airvideo server part of the equation. So what happens is, is that the server pushes out the video and the application that is on the iPad, takes in your video and plays it. It is not necessary to do any conversion of video to make it iPad compatible. It is very simple, start the server version of Air Video on your Mac or Windows computer and then open the Air Video iPad application to choose your movie. Use Air Video to convert movies to iPad format.

The Amazing iPad

It is a simple download to get the Air Video iPad server. I would recommend that to get to the website to download the Air Video server software, that you first go to the App Store and click on the link to get to the developer’s website. You can also do a search in your browser to find the site that you need, but just in case there are bad sites out there, then why not use a link that you can be sure of to get the Airvideo server.

When you first open up the Air Video Mac server, it will open up the preferences for the application. It will also put an icon in your menu bar, so that you can access the application that way also. In the preferences the first thing to do is to set up some shared folders. So if you click on the Add Folder button you will get a dialogue which allows you to add a folder in which you have some movies. It is quite likely that the first folder to add will be the movies folder, which is in your user home folder. If you have more places in which you have movies stored, you can add more folders to the list.

Using AirVideo iPad to Convert Movies

The Air Video server will also convert video to iPad for you. When you click on the tab in the preferences, it will just tell you if there are any files being converted. You can have a file conversion started from Air Video iPad, iPod Touch or the iPhone.

Air Video iPad

The next tab in there in Air Video Mac, is for the settings of the server software. You can set it to start at login, ask you for a password and to listen on a custom port. Personally I prefer to not have it start at login, but maybe you will spend more time watching videos, that you will stream to Air Video iPad from your main computer. You will be wanting to have it more available to use.

The next tab is called Remote and that is for you to enable access from the Internet. That facility is a beta facility at the moment and I think I may wait until it is fully implemented. The next tab along is for subtitles, when you are able to choose the font for the subtitle, and your preferred languages. One more tab available in the settings is called Logs. Most likely, the only time that you will want to look at the logs for the conversions and whatever else it registers, will be if you have some problems.

Getting to use Air Video iPad to watch a movie

So you have your server running and you have opened up the Air Video iPad application on your iPad. On the left-hand side of the screen you will see, not much actually. What you need to do first is to tap on the plus icon to set up your server. I clicked on the name of my computer in the left-hand panel. I clicked on the name of the folder that I have shared, from within the server preferences and I got a list of movies that I could watch.

In Air Video iPad, when you tap on a movie that you would like to view, the right-hand side of the application shows you some details about the movie you have chosen. At the top is the name of the file, followed by the resolution, that is the pixel size of the video, the duration of the video and the file size.

AirVideo2

In the bottom section of that right-hand side, there are four buttons, Play, Convert, Add to iTunes and Play with Live Conversion. With the file that I had chosen in Air Video iPad, I pressed the play button and it did just that. It played the movie within the right-hand section of the Air Video iPad application. I did the same with, Play with Live Conversion and once again, the video started playing.

When the video is playing within the Air Video iPad app, you have the various controls available to you, such as the pause button and the slider which shows how far you are through the video. And over on the right hand side of that area, there is a button you can tap to make it go full-screen.

When you tap the Add to iTunes button, you get a pop-up window which gives you the opportunity to say where you want the video to be saved within iTunes. Just tap on the library you want to use for your video, and it moves out of the way, job done.

Looking at the settings within Air Video iPad

Air Video iPad

In the top right-hand corner of the Air Video iPad application, you will see two buttons one of which is called Global Settings. Give a tap to this button and you will save the settings, that are available to the application. When I first opened the global settings, it showed me a max width of 800 pixels and a max height of 720 pixels. Seeing as the size of the iPad screen is 1024 x 720 pixels then I changed the max width to 1024. I left the slider which determines the quality for off-line conversion at the 70% setting. The next setting, is to have it set to always play videos full-screen, I switched that to on.

The next section in the allowed bit rates for life conversion you have three areas to make changes if you wish. I suggest it is probably a good idea to go with the default settings, unless there is some reason why you need to change it. You can make changes for how it works over local Wi-Fi, remote Wi-Fi and over 3G. Tap on the button, Hide, when you have made all of your changes.

The button that is in the top right-hand corner, next to the global settings is the Queue. Tap on that button if you want to see the videos that are queued for conversion. In that dialogue, you are also able to edit the queue and to stop the current version if you need to.

Getting the best use out of Air Video iPad

When you choose a video that is not in a native format for the iPad, such as an AVI file, the options in the lower part of the screen underneath the movie in the Air Video iPad app, are different. In this case the options as you get are just play with live conversion and convert. If you tap the button play with live conversion, basically what it does is to stream the video to your iPad, so that you can watch it even though it is in a format that would not normally play on the iPad. The other option is to tap on the Convert button, and you get a small dialogue asking you to select the destination folder. All I’m getting at present is, current folder. Next you will see a message which tells you that the video was successfully added to the conversion queue. All that is left to do then, is to tap on the button, Continue.

AirVideo for iPad

What do I think about the air video iPad application?

To start with, we have to say that that the price is excellent. But then it is no good having a small price for an application and a useless app that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. In this case though with Air Video iPad, I have to say that the Air Video application is absolutely marvellous.

Using Air Video iPad, you will be able to watch your videos on the iPad easily, streaming from your computer without you having to do any copying files to iPad. This is a great time saver and also it is very good if you have a smaller amount of internal memory in your iPad. It saves you having to fill up your iPad with large files of video.

Aside from the fact that Air Video iPad is a video streaming application, it is also great to be able to convert video to iPad format. You can be sure that by using this Air Video Mac and iPad application your video will be converted, perfectly to work on the iPad. You can use this application to convert your videos ready to play on the iPad, to save having to mess with the Handbrake presets in that application.

The Amazing iPad

Handbrake Presets on Handbrake on Windows and Handbrake for Mac

DavidAllenWizardgold on 28/09/2011

Handbrake on Windows – Handbrake presets

When it comes down to converting video, there is a myriad of settings, that you can play with and ultimately completely mess up. You have a variety of codecs that get wrapped inside various file types and it is not just the video part of the file that you have to deal with, but also the audio. And it is for that reason why we have a number of iPad video conversion software tools that have included a number of easy presets. Handbrake is one of the better conversion tools, for taking a large variety of different types of video and converting them to specific file types, so that they can be played on a variety of devices. You even have Handbrake for Windows as well as for Linux. Let us have a look at some of the Handbrake presets.

The Amazing iPad

Mac, Windows and Linux all have Handbrake presets

I have just been looking at the website for Handbrake on Windows, where there is a screenshot of Handbrake on the Microsoft platform and compared to the Mac version of the application, there are fewer Handbrake presets. It could be that the screenshot is an older screenshot and newer versions have more presets available. I expect that to be the case, because in the list of Apple presets there is no iPad in the list. The iPad has been around long enough now and there has been some updates of Handbrake since the iPad hit the scene. I feel sure that there must be an iPad preset within Handbrake on Windows.

HandBrake 1

Handbrake presets for easy video conversion

On all of the versions of Handbrake, that is Handbrake for Mac, Handbrake on Windows and the Handbrake for Linux, you can use the presets, or if you wish, completely mess it all up with all of the advanced settings. For this reason, I would highly recommend that you were to do your video conversions in as few clicks as possible. That means to open up the preset section of Handbrake on Windows or your preferred platform. (Mine is a Mac, I think you might have guessed that already.) Click on the preset that you require, after you have told Handbrake where your source video is, then click the start button.

The letter boxing effect even when using Handbrake presets

Because the iPad screen dimensions have been designed to accommodate a page size rather than a widescreen video shape, you will get the letterbox effect, that is the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. It shouldn’t really affect your enjoyment of the movie, and it doesn’t affect the quality of the video conversion. The iPad screen dimensions have been dictated by the need to mostly use applications based on the shape of a piece of paper, such as the European A4, or the old-fashioned American letter size. If we had an iPad that was of the 16:9 ratio shape of a widescreen movie, it would be strange to use in all of the non-movie applications.

Converting video for the iPad with Handbrake iPad presets

Ipad HandBrake settings

It is truly simple to do this task, if you are only needing to convert my file just to play on the iPad. You might have to make some choices about the best type of file conversion preceptor to work with of the Handbrake presets, is when you want to have a file which will also work on something else such as, the Apple TV, a smart phone, (whether it be an Android or an iOS device), as well as having the video play on the iPad.

Smart phone, iPad, Apple TV – choices

If you choose the file size that is most suitable for working on the iPhone in the Handbrake presets, then you will have no problem with also playing that on the iPad too. The only thing is, is that the quality of the video will not be as high when you play it on the iPad, as it will have to scale up. The iPad does not have any problem in playing files which are the size for the Apple TV which is 1280 x 720, which is one of the high definition video sizes. It may also be possible to play that same file on an iPhone, the only thing to consider, will be the file size and the amount of space you have available on your smart phone.

Doing it for free with Handbrake on Windows and Handbrake presets

When you want to convert files from whatever format to the format you need to play properly and with quality on the iPad, you will be spoilt for choice. There are a large number of programs and applications available, some of them you will have to pay for and some of them are free. For the most part there is no advantage to actually paying money for one of these free video converters and you will find that Handbrake on Windows and Handbrake for Mac are both free applications. You will also find that the speed of the conversion is just the same, whichever program you are using, only faster or slower depending upon your computer hardware.

The Amazing iPad

What video conversion software are you using?

Leave a comment below in this post and let us know which video conversion software you think is the best. Or if you prefer, go to the contacts page and there you can send me an e-mail. I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say about Handbrake presets, or which ever software you are using. Handbrake for Windows, how is it working for you?

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What is an iPad Used For? Depends on Who You Ask!

DavidAllenWizardgold on 20/09/2011

What is an iPad used for? – good question

It is a very good question, what is an iPad used for, and the answer is going to depend largely on who you are asking. For example, if you are asking me the question, then I’m likely to say that it is good for finding information, such as the name of actress in the film, that I am watching. I was also say that is good for doing some work with a mind map, for getting some ideas out of my head and into some manageable format. Then I’m quite likely to use that set of ideas, that have been turned into text in an application, that is a note taking application, good for dealing with text, either in straight text format or in perhaps the outline format as used by something like Omni outliner.
The Amazing iPad

I am really not too much into playing games, but every now and then I might fling a few birds around in Angry Birds. I do have Infinity Blade installed on the iPad, and I keep promising to have a go at it, quite soon. If you get talking to the sort of persons, that are really into playing games then it seems that the iPad really is a good device for playing games on. There are a large number of games in the Apple iPad application store to choose from. So when you are wondering what is an iPad are used for, and you are looking for some entertainment, it could be that you are into the wandering around shooting zombies, type of game, and then again maybe you are looking for something that is more like a puzzle.

Using an iPad for business, and the answers you get to your question, of what is an iPad are used for, will be different again. There are a large number of applications that have been built especially for a business. It is economically feasible for a large business to have an application created that specifically solves a problem for that business. Quite possibly could be a database that is accessed from the iPad, so that the business people using the iPad will be able to have access to the information required to be successful. Some of these applications will not necessarily be found in the Apple iPad application store and will be distributed locally within the company.

There are some applications such as Bento for iPad, which are general-purpose applications, which can be turned to a variety of tasks. Bento for iPad is a database that is extremely versatile, although it is not a fully relational database. If you need a fully relational database then you can get an application which will work with MySQL and there are others that will work with the big databases like FileMaker.Filemaker Go

Quite likely a business user with the iPad will also be interested in spreadsheets. Dealing with the data that is contained with sets of numbers, and turning them into good-looking charts, that can be used for organising the business. Note taking applications will also be high on the list for business users, Phatpad for handwriting recognition for within meetings and straight note taking applications such as Nebulous Notes or PlainText.

What is an iPad used for – Getting social

Whether you are a business user, iPad on the sofa user, or a gamer, you going to be quite interested in the social networking applications. Many businesses these days are looking for ways to increase the amount of business and sales by using social networking. It seems that just about every day, I receive an e-mail telling me about a webinar that has all the information, about everything required to use Facebook for business purposes.

Twitterific what is an iPad used forThere are a mountain of Twitter applications, my favourite would be Twitterrific, although I also have TweetDeck, Twitbird Pro on the iPad and I also have tried a few others. An application that I really enjoy using, which is great for a number of different social networking applications, is Flipboard. With Flipboard you can use it to see what is happening in Facebook, the best thing about Flipboard, is the way that it takes your feed from Facebook and presents it in a almost a newspaper like fashion, on the screen and makes it very easy to read. It is in some ways a kind of like a book and you can swipe from right to left to move to the next page. It will have the first part of the story and images that have been included, if you tap on the first part of the story in Flipboard, it will take you to the full article. Then you can tap on the small arrow in the top left-hand corner to get back to the Flipboard interface.

FlipboardYou can also use Flipboard to show RSS feeds, for instance from your favourite blog or from Google reader. It will also bring in a feed from a search in Twitter, so that for instance if you are interested in tech, it will bring in all the tweets on that subject and arrange them in Flipboard, so that you can read it really easily.

What is an iPad are used for – Consuming information

When you are asking what is an iPad used for, the answer of consuming information from various sources, has to be a popular answer. On my iPad I have the BBC News application, net newswire, which is an RSS reader and there are now a large number of magazines that are available either through the Apple iPad store or as HTML 5 magazines. If you want to see how good an HTML 5 magazine can be, have a look at the aside HTML 5 magazine, and I’m sure you will be impressed.

The reason that the HTML 5 magazine format, is popular with some publishers is because it gets around the Apple taking a part of the payment for the magazine, their commission, for including it in their Apple Store. A number of newspapers such as the London Times are experimenting with this way forward. Another reason for doing it this way is because the magazine or newspaper gets more information about who their customers are. And also perhaps, more importantly, it gets to know what their credit card numbers are, too, it makes it easier for them to up sell with other products.

The Amazing iPad

Creating Content with the iPad

There are a lot more things that could be said about what is an iPad used for. There are content creators start making videos completely within the iPad using the camera on the rear of the iPad, and iMovie as the application of choice for editing the video. For consuming the video you have the video application, there is also the YouTube video application. Watching videos on the iPad is an extremely popular way of using the iPad. We have audio experts that will be using applications such as Garageband, to create music or podcasts. Then you can also be using applications such as Stitcher, for consuming the audio content.

I am sure that with this article I am only scratching the surface of what is an iPad used for. Please send me an e-mail using the form below, to let me know how would you answer the question of what is an iPad used for. I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say and I would be pleased to put your answers into another article and credit you with what you have to say about how you use your iPad. I will also put a link back to your website for you, if your information is included in the article.

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Does The iPad Have a Camera And What Can you Do with it?

DavidAllenWizardgold on 08/09/2011

Does The iPad Have a Camera

This is a question that was very popular when the iPad one came out, and for a short while after the iPad 2 became available. Does the iPad have a camera? When the iPad was first introduced, everybody kind of expected that Apple would put everything into the new tablet device. Well perhaps not everybody, because it does actually make sense for Apple to leave things to put into a second version, and a 3rd version, as part of their planned upgrade path. Apple do need to have products which will continue to be better, brighter and shinier, on just about a yearly basis.

One might have thought that Apple would have a camera in the first iPad, seeing as there was already a camera in the iPhone. Apart from the need to perhaps have a roadmap for Apple products into the future, with the iPad, they may have felt that for the price point that they wanted for the first iPad, a camera would not be possible.

The Amazing iPad

Now with iPad version 2 the answer to the question – does the iPad have a camera? – The answer is an emphatic yes! It has 2 cameras, one on the front and one on the rear. The camera on the rear of the iPad is the main camera, and the better camera of the two, and it is a camera which will recording HD video as well as record still images and photographs.

An Alternative Question to Does The iPad Have a Camera

A question that is often asked photographers is which is your best camera? And often the answer to that question is always going to be, the camera I have with me at the time. It has already been seen that the most popular camera on Flickr presently is the iPhone, despite many of the users of the iPhone already having a fancy SLR camera. It is just so easy to pull out the iPhone and take a quick snapshot, wherever you may be. Now that there are cameras in the iPad, although the iPad may be a little bit more unwieldy to use, the iPad will also become popular for taking photographs. It does at least have the advantage of having a large screen, compared to the iPhone, for being able to see what you are taking photographs of.
Does the ipad have a camera
So wherever you may be at the time, it is going to be easy to capture those spontaneous moments. The iPad in operation is pretty quick, so to change from another application to the camera app, takes hardly any time at all. So that there is more possibility that you will be able to capture that unbelievable moment.

The iPad 2, also has advanced rear illumination sensors, and with this is makes it possible to take photographs in lowlight conditions, without the need for a huge flash. With this camera on the rear you are able to record video at 720p at up to 30 frames per second, and also record audio with that. When you are using the camera for still photographs, you have a 5 times digital zoom.

One of the neat tricks of the software available within the iPad 2, is that you can tap an area within their photo to set the exposure. The photos and the videos you take Also can be geo-tagged over Wi-Fi, this works nicely with iPhoto and you will be able to see exactly where you shot that movie, or took that photograph.

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Instead of asking – Does The iPad Have a Camera – Ask about the tech Specs of the iPad 2

There are some people that complain about the camera that is available on the front of the iPad 2, because it is of lower quality and for the video recording or still image recording, only records up to VGA quality. When you think about it though, it’s not necessary that both cameras are of the same quality, and the camera on the front is sufficient for the purpose. The camera which is on the front is mainly for the purpose of using with Face Time, and other video conferencing software, such as Skype. The iPad 2, goes a long way to answer the question – Does the iPad have a camera?

On the Apple website for the iPad, Apple claim that the cameras maybe tiny, but are perfectly designed for face time video calling. Certainly it does seem to work very well, for a video chat, as you don’t want to have too much data having to travel across Wi-Fi and the effect being spoiled by low transfer speeds of data.

iPad Tech Specs

If you have a look at the iPad spec and check out the iPad screen dimensions, you will see that at 1024 x 768, iPad format, you have a nice sized screen. Does the iPad have a camera? Yes it does and it is a touch camera.
Photobooth iPad

Another application that is perhaps even more popular, with both children and adults alike, is Photo Booth. Without even trying, because the software does it for you you can pull funny faces and have special effects to your picture. This application certainly creates lots of laughter, with new looking like an alien, or a comic book character or when the software twists your face into a strange shape. The photos from Photo Booth are saved automatically to your photo library, where you can turn them into slide shows, or send them to your friends by e-mail. Now you know the answer. Does the iPad have a camera? It sure does and there are two of them. It is expected also that in iPad 3 the cameras will be of a higher mega-pixel quality.
The Amazing iPad

An Extra Display For Your Mac Using the iPad as Second Monitor

DavidAllenWizardgold on 04/09/2011

Using the iPad as second monitor

If you are like me, then it is quite likely that you like to spread your applications on as much screen display space as possible. Even when you have a 27 inch iMac, or maybe even if you have the new Apple Thunderbolt Cinema display, the latest new large monitor from Apple, you still don’t have enough space, and would like more. Or maybe you only have a 13 inch MacBook Pro and you feel the need to spread out a little bit, and have more screen space to perhaps see what is happening on Twitter, Facebook or be able to see who is available on Skype. Did you know that you can use the iPad as a second monitor?

The Amazing iPad

If you have a 27 inch iMac with the two Thunderbolt ports, you can actually have a monitor on either side of your main computer screen. Wouldn’t that be nice! If you have a MacBook Pro then there would be one external video port that you could use, to at least connect one extra screen. But how about this for a different idea, in case you are unable to take advantage of the normal solutions available. Why not use the iPad as second monitor, I know the iPad only has a small screen compared to an inexpensive display monitor, that you can buy from the local computer store. Sometimes though you have just go with what you have available, and in this case you have your laptop or Mac desktop computer available, and your iPad.

Getting set up to use iPad as second monitor

Using iPad as second monitor
The first thing you need to do is to go to iTunes and do a search for iDisplay. iDisplay costs $4.99 and is one part of the setup, that you will need to be able to get using iPad as second display up and running. iDisplay is the client side software, which has to be installed on the iPad. Next, you will need to go to shapeservices.com and download the universal app, which is optimised to work with the client app you have already installed on your iPad.

Installation of the universal app on your desktop or laptop is a double-click on an install application. It doesn’t even take much setting up, it just appears in your menu bar, and you are done. After installation you will need to do a restart of your computer. The next thing to do, is to go to your iPad and start the iDisplay application, click on always allow in the pop up dialog, so that the next time you wish to use iDisplay it will automatically connect up.

iPad As Second Monitor – Up and Running

IDisplay for iPad
After you have got the application running, it will be a good idea for you to go to system preferences on your computer and set up the display options. You will see where the iPad display is in relation to the main screen, and you can move the display, to have it wherever it is correct in relation to the main computer. You will find that if you put the display below the main screen, you’ll see that your dock will be displayed in the iPad screen. I wouldn’t find that a terribly satisfactory, preferring to have the extra display on either the right or the left of the main screen. If you have the iPad physically to the left of the main screen, then it will be better to also have it to the left, in the arrangement of the monitors within the setup. If you decide to have the iPad physically to the left, but over on the right in the display set up, you will be continually confusing yourself.

When you use iPad as second monitor, you will find that it works pretty well and you can see any applications that you place on it, no trouble at all. It is not really recommended that you try playing a video on the iPad, on the second screen, as there would be some lag due to the fact that you’re using Wi-Fi to send the image to the iPad screen. What would be more suitable would be if you had a Twitter client, or maybe a web page that you were using as a reference, while you were working writing an article.

Best to Turn off the Bluetooth for Best Results

One thing, that you have to be aware of is the fact that because the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios use the same antenna, it is a good idea to make Bluetooth inactive while you’re using iDisplay. If you forget to turn off Bluetooth, then you may find that the Wi-Fi performance is impaired sufficiently to make the display not work as well as you need it to.

In the later versions of iDisplay, they have made it possible to launch applications right from the amazing iPad iOS device, and also be able to move windows to the iDisplay screen.

Increase your Productivity Using an iPad.

It seems to me, that iDisplay would allow you to increase your productivity, due to the fact that you can maximise the viewable area on your main display. Especially for those of us, that are multitasking users, wishing to move some applications to the external display, and keep the main display for work related applications. iDisplay is a good option if you would like the ability to use iPad as second monitor, why not give it a try.

The Amazing iPad

Best Video Monkey Settings For Ipad – Video Conversion for iPad

DavidAllenWizardgold on 26/05/2011

How to use VideoMonkey iPad settings

I just downloaded the latest version of Video Monkey which is 0.10 and there is not a specific setting to use for Video Monkey iPad. You would think that after this amount of time that the iPad has been available that there would be a button for one click settings to use.

Best Video Monkey Settings For Ipad

Video Monkey

But all is not lost for getting the correct settings for Video Monkey iPad, you just have to know where to look. The first thing to do is to drag and drop a video file into Video Monkey. Then you want to choose the 1st Generation Apple TV in the Convert To drop down list. Assuming that you have dropped in a video that has larger proportions already it will bring it down in size to 1024 by 720 which is the video size for iPad. In the main window where the file is though, you get some details of the file size and frame size and even with the 1024 by 720 set in the format limits it still says the frame size is 1280 by 720. In fact I tested it and that is what it came out as – So that setting in VideoMonkey did not work.

If you put in a file that is for example 960 by 544 and is smaller than the iPad video size, Video Monkey will upscale it and there is probably not much point in doing that. All that you get is a larger file and it is better to let it get upscaled by the iPad itself. So what you should do here is to tick the checkbox Limit output params to input which is under the drop down for Encoding speed.

There are not many settings you can fiddle with in Video Monkey to help you get the right video resolution for iPad. There is a quality setting which will give you a larger file size when you move it from the Standard through High to Go Nuts. You can use the Fastest encoding speed which is default or you can go for Fast, Normal or Best which gives it a two pass so that the quality is higher still with the video conversion for iPad.

History of Video Monkey

There was the Visual Hub application which the developer decided to give up on and what he did was to make the code open source and I believe that Video Monkey was one of the applications that picked up the ball to run with it. I still have VisualHub and it still will convert video for iPad for me. Many of these applications are a Visual front end for FFMPEG, so what you are getting is FFMPEG video for iPad conversion.

Is Video Monkey any good for converting video for iPad resolution?

VideoMonkey does not get my vote at the moment as the right solution for video conversion for iPad. There are not enough settings to work with and some that are there do not work, such as the Format Limits button. Due to the way Video Monkey is now it will be hard to get the best video monkey settings for ipad. I would recommend something else for getting the video resolution iPad optimal.

What else is there for Video Conversion for iPad?

We can get Handbrake to convert to the correct iPad video size. There is FFMPEGX which I will give a try next. I haveMPEG StreamClip which is an application I like and I know works well. There are others too and when I find the best application to do video conversion for iPad I will post the details in here.

A day out with the iPad – Using Edito the Markdown Editor

DavidAllenWizardgold on 18/05/2011

Today I was a tourist professional, well that was my nominated title anyway. My wife is a teacher of teenagers in a vocational school. They learn how to be tour guides, tour operators, hotel receptionists and any other work in that line. Today was a trip with the youngsters to Roses in Catalonia and they had to give us tourist professionals a guided tour. So that we could recommend it to the businesses we were supposed to be representing. So that was the whole day and not much time to write my daily blog post for the #blog2011 blogathon.

So did I take the iPad with me? Of Course I Did !

Did I have time to do anything with it ? Not flaming’ likely. Well not much anyway. I was able to get the ipad out while the group were looking around a bird sanctuary, that I had been to before quite recently. I found a text that I had written for an article in TextMate using Markdown and then had converted to html text. I got that inDropbox. Strangely it didn’t have a Open In button so that I could read it without having to look at the code in amongst the text. I also tried opening in a couple of iPad text editors and again it had the code in there.

Then I remembered Edito a specialist text editor. This one allows you to write markdown and then had a button to tap that shows what it looks like with the formation applied. Seeing as it also deals with html code seeing as it is perfectly possible that you might put html code in the same document. Hey Presto ! I was able to see what I wanted to pretty clearly. There is a limit to the number of ways you can see the text depending on the style sheets that are available in the app. It was good enough though and I was able to read it while filming myself for a podcast. Looks like the iPad is good enough for business use. Due to some top iPad business apps.

I will add the movie to YouTube as soon as I have edited it and post it here as well.

Have you created any videos for Youtube lately?

Aside – the stunning HTML5 Magazine for iPad

DavidAllenWizardgold on 17/05/2011

Magazines for iPad or News on iPad

Aside1

I decided to have a look at the subject of Magazines on the iPad because of getting an email which told me about Aside. The email came in from Graphic.com and the headline is all about HTML 5. They have built this magazine for reading on the iPad using the new flavour of html that will take over all new web pages in time. I am impressed by this html5 iPad magazine.

All you have to do to get the magazine on the iPad is to go to the web page in Safari and there is a pointer on the page to tell you which button to press in Safari to add the Magazine to the home screen of the iPad. I didn’t know you could do that and it works great. I did as I was told and not I have an icon for Aside that I can click on to open the Magazine direct.

When you open Aside Magazine it looks like another application. It is not like viewing a web page in the browser and it looks very tasty. What is comes down to is design and looking good, photos and text combined is a very specific way. None of this re flowing of text to suit different sizes of page. This is Desktop Publishing proper, a designer has decided the look and feel of a page as would happen with a magazine on a news stand. The only thing different in this concept is that each page has to have two designs so that the portrait and landscape modes are taken care of.

WOW! I am so impressed!

I just opened it to confirm the previous paragraph and yes that is the case with the portrait and landscape. What just impressed me with Aside html5 though was a page that has four photos on it. When you touch one of the photos it zooms itself into the foreground and looks incredible. I did it by accident first but there is a bit of text to say ‘Tap to Enlarge’. I just love it.

Aside5

Double WOW!

It gets even better. On the next page there is a 3D ugly looking squirrel that actually can be rotated, that is spun in 3D space by sliding my finger on the screen. It is fantastic, this interactivity which I wasn’t expecting to find at all. I though there would be multi media in there such as a bit of audio or a tap to play a movie but this is certainly new and cool.

Navigating Pages in Aside Magazine

To move from page to page it is the usual swipe from left to right and then if the page is longer, such as the page with a short story, you can swipe from bottom to top to have the page scroll. There is an image in the bottom left corner of a page curl. Tapping on that brings up a table of contents on the left side of the screen. There is an small image and a wee bit of text for each page.

Tap to go to the page. You do have to wait just a short while when the page loads, depends on the speed of your internet how quick it is. Once it has been loaded then the next time you go to the page it is there waiting for you. You close the app and it is gone requiring a reload, so you would want to do this over Wifi and not over 3G. Even if they have optimised the graphics for iPad and by using HTML5 kept it all a manageable size in megabytes.

Magazine Has Hot Links

The magazine has hot links to take you to other pages, there are similar small buttons that will link you to a web page outside of the magazine and buttons you can press to change a picture in some places on the page. It also changes the text beside the picture to suit the image too. Aside  html5 also has a page with music that you can play, iPad audio, with a button to start and stop the sounds. It doesn’t do pause though on this one, it is probably possible though.

There is a Blending the Bunny page with a movie which started playing and then stopped to do the reloading. Only took a short time, less than a minute to load and played beautifully. Even possible to go full screen with it. Looks brilliant with HTML5 iPad being used.

 

Asidewide3

When I started to write this I thought I would have to write in here about other magazines that you can get on the iPad like Wired and newspapers like the New York Times and Zinio which is a free proper application that sells the electronic versions of the magazines that you can buy from the news shops in the high street. I didn’t realise how awesome Aside HTML5 Magazine was going to be with its use of the new web language. I now want to go and learn HTML5 now for myself and create something like this. I am that impressed and this is going to be brilliant for authors and writers.

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