Transferring video onto tablet and looping it?

F

firehawk

Veteran
Hi all.
In the past I needed to put some videos onto iPads so they could be played on location to show people even when no internet was available. I explored several ways to try to do this - buying special cables/card readers etc and also via copying the video files from a mac computer to the iPad. Apparently newer iOS made this more difficult than it was prior. This was back on older iPads.

Anyway, now I need to be able to transfer a video file onto a new tablet and be able to loop the video indefinitely. It will also have sound. So I am trying to determine what type of tablet would be the right choice to accomplish this as the tablet has not been bought yet, and also how to do it. They prefer iPad (12" Pro maybe) but I might be able to convince them to use another brand if I have good reason.
I can convert the video to whatever format the tablet needs.
As far as computers to assist with connecting and transferring the videos to the tablet, I have PC workstations running Win7 Pro and a 2008 MacPro running OSX 10.7 Lion with old versions of itunes.

Any thoughts?
 
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I'd go with Android tablet and bluetooth speakers, probably use VLC to play the file and set it to looping. Cheap tablets from Geekbuying.com , probably in for $150 each or less depending on the features needed, but not many over 10 inches. And yes I do buy from them, recently bought a Teclast M89 for ereader stuff and general consumption device.

Look at any smart TV, most all of them will let you play a file from USB, and loop it or a playlist of files. This is what we do at recruitment open house, just did this last weekend. Works with stills or video on most modern LCD smart TV's. Again looking at around $150 for a 32inch display with speakers.
 
Thank you very much Greg. Everything you said is great.
After talking some more they told me they really do prefer Apple so I borrowed a 2018 ipad and did some testing. With my SD card to lightning cable, I was able to transfer an .mp4 file to the ipad and then select Slideshow, push and repeat. It works, thankfully.
It appears that the SD card must have the video file(s) in a DCIM directory and that the video file must be 12345678.xxx (eight plus three character format).
Hope this helps someone else in the future who needs to do this.

So now they are going to get an iPad pro which uses USB instead of lightning connection which will add a new element to the equation, but my research tells me that it will connect directly to a camera via usb to mini usb and copy off video so I think we will be ok. If not, I guess I can buy the Apple USB to SD card cable if I cannot get anything else to work.
 
Put the video file on a website and then download it to the tablet, even google drive should work for this, but drop box, etc. should also work fine. The tablets with USB are a bit old, resolution of the file may determine if the file will play.
 
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