Navigating iTunes

[Mirrorlike]

I can't figure out how to make albums of photos, or how to save (free) movies off "iTunes U" to my hard drive.

Does anyone else hate this software as much as i do? It's fine right until I need something basic & I can't be sure if it's blocked, eg Linux support.

[scottjl]

well you didn't say if you're on a mac or pc.. that would help.

you can't export movies out of itunes to your hard drive to view in other programs. not easily. sorry. apple is pretty protective of those things.

[Mirrorlike]

Right, I'm definitely jailbreaking once that comes out. I'm on PC.

what format are the 'backups' that it saves to the HD? I never let it finish.

[nikkie]

Any movies you get from iTunes are DRM'd. Read about it on Wikipedia.

On a PC, you cannot automatically sync photo albums or events. This is OSX only.

[scottjl]

the backup is a large file containing the apps and data that are stored on the ipad. you'll use it in the event you ever need to do a restore to your ipad. it does take a while the first time but after that it should go through much quicker, unless you somehow add a lot of content to your ipad through a means other than your PC (like downloading apps, or in-app purchases).

[Fabe]

I'm a longtime Mac user and I am finding it confusing using iTunes for things other than music. Perhaps Apple should rework the concept and change the name to iMedia and have more intuitive navigation.

[dmaul1114]

Yeah, they 100% need to come up with a better way of managing files and getting content on and off the iPad than iTunes.

It works great for music and video paired with an iPod. Pretty clunky for trying to get PDFs, Photos etc. on the iPad, into all the relevent apps etc.

I'm hoping that's something they address by the 2nd gen ipad. Either soup up iTunes to be just as easy to use for other file types as it is for music, or give the iPad it's own media management program that's more robust.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

...or give the iPad it's own media management program that's more robust.

[Mirrorlike]

Originally Posted by nikkie

Any movies you get from iTunes are DRM'd. Read about it on Wikipedia.

See that's the problem... it's free, actually an educational video that I can get from the college websites. Why would they drm it?.....

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by Mirrorlike

See that's the problem... it's free, actually an educational video that I can get from the college websites. Why would they drm it?.....

You can add non-drm videos to itunes also. I have hundreds of videos in itunes that I can sync to my iPad almost all of them are DRM free. I use HandBreak to encode them.

[Mirrorlike]

Originally Posted by Ciaran

You can add non-drm videos to itunes also. I have hundreds of videos in itunes that I can sync to my iPad almost all of them are DRM free. I use HandBreak to encode them.

yeah, but then it mixes movies with educational videos, & you cant do it without a pc + iTunes, so I can't do it at school. I hate bad design.

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by Mirrorlike

yeah, but then it mixes movies with educational videos, & you cant do it without a pc + iTunes, so I can't do it at school. I hate bad design.

Not saying its a good design but it can be done. You do have to have a PC or Mac. Also if you want things not to be mixed you say its a TV show and call the show "Educational Videos" or something and you can keep them in their own area. Or maybe what you want is already out there in iTunesU or a podcast and can then download/subscribe directly.

[Neil]

The easiest way to view videos that are on your Mac or your PC on an iPad is an app called Air Video. You run this as a server on your desktop (very simple to do, no network skill set needed) and then the app on your iPad is your client. If your iPad and your desktop are on the same wifi network the iPad will automatically see and access your desktop. If you are off somewheres you can be in a hotspot and access your desktop's movies via the internet. The upcoming 3G iPads will, of course, be able to access the movies over the internet by 3G.

One of the most interesting things about this app is that it will seamlessly convert movies on the fly. So if your desktop's movies are all avi's (for example) you will not need to convert them to mpgs. Most surprisingly the process does not cause any video stuttering, unsynched audio or other problems. So, I have about 200 movies on my iPad!

Oh, one caveat -- if you bought movies with DRM it will not access those.

[scottjl]

i second the recommendation for air video. it's a very useful app, nice thing is it's a universal binary, you get the ipad and the iphone/touch version. the server application consumes very little resources on my system, and you can access it over 3g.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Mirrorlike

I can't figure out how to make albums of photos, or how to save (free) movies off "iTunes U" to my hard drive.

Does anyone else hate this software as much as i do? It's fine right until I need something basic & I can't be sure if it's blocked, eg Linux support.

To get those iTunes U (and other movies) you need to go to the following folder:

Users/<yourname>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies

In that folder you can pull out any of your iTune'd movies but, of course, you won't be able to play any DRM'd ones. I am pretty sure (but don't have one available to test) that the iTunes U ones are not DRM'd.