Today I literally spent hours trying to get a short (1:47 trt) video onto my iPad. I’ve been using Portfolio for iPad but when it was updated at the end of February, I’ve had serious issues playing video. It crashes the whole app – not very impressive when you’re trying to impress a potential client.

I’ve been looking for other ways to play video off-line and decided the apple app included with the ipad would work fine. But getting video to work on an iPad isn’t as simple as getting it to play on a mac or pc.

After several attempts with itunes and dropbox (which took an HOUR for a less than 2 minute video) only to have the iPad basically say, “I can’t play that file”

Now keep in mind one of those files is already on the iPad and has played successfully dozens of times in that portfolio app that no longer works properly.

After a lot of trial and error, here’s what I came up with.

iPad (version 1) seems to like these video settings best:

Hopefully this will save someone the hours of frustration I just went through figuring this out!

Portland photographer Pete Springer

Noisiest day ever outside the studio recently. Couldn’t resist putting together a short video. Hey, had to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t pull my hair out. And just when the jackhammer was done, a guy pulled out a chainsaw! It was not exactly a day for quiet contemplation.

Portland Photographer Pete Springer

There’s a great podcast interview with Florida photographer Pascal Depuhl on New Media Photographer right now. The interview starts around 14:00 minutes into the podcast, though the rest of the show is interesting too.

The Depuhl interview is about the business transition from still to video shooter. It touches on a whole lot of issues that have us still shooters scratching our heads when it comes to video. Labor issues, rights issues, that kind of thing. It’s well worth a listen. Put it on your phone and go for a walk or listen on a drive. I promise you’ll get a couple of laughs out of it too — especially if you’re starting to shoot video. Depuhl says just about a hundred percent of his still clients are interested in video and that’s been my experience as well.

I think a lot of us will always be still shooters at heart. It’s definitely my absolute favorite medium. Stuck on a desert island, I’ll take ten years of Vogue over ten years of video any day. But I suspect the masses would select video.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland