The new iPad Pro Retina display make it ideal for TV shows and movies watching and the 4rd-genration Apple iPad has the best video playback qualitywe’ve seen from the tablet range so far. Throw in the iPad Pro’s robust battery life and obvious portability, and you’ve got a top-notch on-the-go entertainment device. When it comes to watching videos on the iPad Pro tablet, users have a wholeslew of choices, including watching movies online through iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, transferring local movies to the new iPad, encoding MKV/AVI/WMV to iPad Pro compatible video, turning DVD and Blu-ray into iPad movies, and processing iPad video streaming. Below are several ways for beginners to enjoy movies on iPad Pro. Just check out the tutorial to explore your options.
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Watch Movies Online
Use iPad Built-in Apps to Watch Online Movie
The new iPad Pro comes up with 2 built-in apps for you to enjoy free YouTube movie and shop for online streaming movie & TV shows as long as your iPad is in connection with Internet via WiFi or your carrier’s cellular network.
Open the iTunes app to shop for thousands of HD movies and TV shows up to 1080p HD. While you’re there, pick up any movie or song you like. There are over 20 million to choose from. And iCloud lets you access your iTunes purchases from iPad Pro.
YouTube on iPad makes videos easier to find and more fun to watch. With the new iPad, you can gape in shock or laugh in fits at a YouTube video in HD.
Get More iPad Pro Movie and TV Apps from App Store
You may find that the iPad doesn’t do that much on its own. But that’s not a big deal, because there are tons of movie apps that you can get from the App Store. I’ve put up 4 popular iPad Movie and TV Apps for your reference:
Crackle Crackle shoots to the top of the list for one very simple reason: it’s free. Not only is it a free download, but it also doesn’t take a subscription fee to watch premier movies and television.
Netflix With a great collection of movies and TV, Netflix is sure to keep you entertained. The streaming-only subscription cost for Netflix is $7.99.
Movies by Flixster The #1 app for movie reviews, trailers, and showtimes. The most downloaded movies app of all time
Hulu Plus The Hulu Plus lets you enjoy unlimited instant streaming of current hit TV shows. It takes some flack for both requiring a subscription cost ($7.99 a month) and having commercials within the video playback.
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Transfer Local Movies to iPad Pro for watching
How to put local movies to iPad Pro
1. Install iTunes latest version (iTunes download)
2. Add local movies to iTunes
3. Sync iTunes movie to iPad Pro
Limitations ( picky format ) & Problems (unsupported format)
You can rent movies in standard-definition or high-definition format from the iTunes Store and watch them on iPad Pro. But you may meet problems when adding materials acquired from other sources. To watch movies in iTunes and iPad unacceptable formats, please refer to the following sections.
Encoding MKV, AVI, WMV, VOB, TiVo etc. videos to iPad Pro compatible video
Knowing about iPad Pro Compatible Video Formats – The First Step You Get and Watch Free Movies on iPad Pro
The New iPad/iPad Pro Supported TV and Video File Types
Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format. AirPlay Mirroring to Apple TV (4nd and 3rd generation) at 720p AirPlay video streaming to Apple TV (4rd/3rd generation) at up to 1080p and Apple TV (2nd generation) at up to 720p Video mirroring and video out support: Up to 1080p with Apple Digital AV Adapter or Apple VGA Adapter (adapters sold separately) Video out support at 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable (cable sold separately) Although the new iPad can play videos in Full HD 1080p, it only support video file formats in M4V, MOV or MP4 format. There’re lots of other formats (MKV, AVI, VOB, MPEG, TiVo, etc.) that iPad Pro does not support. In this case, to play these videos on the new iPad Pro, you may have to convert them to H.264 or MPEG-4 encoded format first.
To achieve the goal smoothly, below are several tutorials for you, guaranteed to get iPad Pro and MKV, AVI, TiVo, WMV etc. HD videos to play nicely. Download the App – Video Converter for iPad (available for Windows or for Mac users).
Get the Windows version here, and the Mac version here.
Guides for Converting Incompatible Videos to Best Format for iPad iPad Pro
Solutions: QuickTime Video on iPad | MKV on iPad | Netflix movies on iPad Mini | Vuze video with iPad | WLMP to iPad
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To Infinity and Beyond – Turn DVD and Blu-ray into iPad Pro Movies
As mentioned above, you can watch your favorite contents from iTunes movie library anywhere you go. Of course, most of you are not about to pay iTunes’ ridiculous prices to watch movies and TV shows we already own on Blu-ray and DVD. Instead, we’ll just rip those discs to an iPad-friendly format. Most of you are likely familiar with the excellent Handbrake for ripping standard Def DVDs, however, it cannot yet decrypt the commercial Blu-Ray and DVD discs (ie: Disney and other animated movies) the way it can with regular DVDs, so you’ll need to add an intermediate step.
If you’re interested in doing likewise, check out Pavtube BDMagic which can package Blu-ray, DVD and ISO image files to iPad Pro highly comaptible video formats. I’ve had success using the program to convert Blu-Ray and DVD discs to a format playable by the new iPad. I’ve found the quality to be excellent, and see no difference when compared to playing the discs themselves. The audio/video synchronization is very good, the size of the subtitles too. The time it takes to convert in this software is almost half that in other. For a brief tutorial into how to rip and copy Blu-ray and DVD movies to 1080p, 720p and 480p video to fit iPad Pro viewing, follow the guides listed below:
Blu-ray on iPad Series via Mac | Blu-ray for Plex Streaming to iPad 4 | DVD to AirVR use iPad Mini | DVD Furious 7 Full Movie on iPad/iPhone |
Best Format Setting for Watching Videos on iPad Pro
The key setting video size for your new iPad Pro is according to your source video exactly. If your source video is in 1080p, you can set your video size in 1920*1080 in H.264 codec; while, if your original video size is in standard, 720p in enough. For example, to play DVD on the new Apple TV 4, 720*480 video size is enough due to the dvd movies’ native resolution. So I can’t give you a exactly right answer. But I have do some tests and worked out the best format settings (for best viewing quality) when ripping Blu-ray to iPad Pro:
Video Codec- H.264 Resolution- 1920×1080 (HD) Bitrate- 4000~5000kbps Framerate- 24fps
Audio Codec- AAC Sampling rate- 48khz Bitrate- 128kbps Channel- stereo
Note: By using the above mentioned audio and video settings, you can easily rip and convert 1080p Blu-ray disc/Blu-ray ISO to the new iPad Pro for playback with 1080p quality reserved and the video/audio parameters is based on the 1080p videos sold on iTune store.
Some useful Tips for Encoding Video Files to iPad Pro:
Use a high resolution source file.
Always convert equal or less in resolution and bitrate, never up.
2000~3000kbps looks excellent, 4000~5000kbps looks amazing, but the only thing to keep in mind is that the file size is based more on bitrate than resolution which means bitrate higher results in big file size, and lower visible quality loss.
Even lower resolution videos look fine when sampled at high bitrate.
DVDs aren’t high resolution, so don’t try to convert them to 1280 x 720! (DVDs maximum 720 pixels wide)
The sweet spot: 1080p @ 3000 kbps, but avoid black-bars or you can’t zoom.
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Bigger Screen, Better Effect – iPad Video Mirroring and Streaming
Article Reference: iPad Pro Column (P.S. If anyone have some other advice or any problems about watching videos on the iPad Air 2, iPad 3 or iPad 2, just leave a message in the comments area.)
Read More:
- Encode H.265 video for iPhone/iPad/Apple TV on Mac
- Rip Gone Girl Blu-ray for streaming to Apple TV over Plex
- Stream Video from iPhone/iPad/iPod to Apple TV
- Stream any video from your Mac to an Apple TV
- Use AirPlay to Watch DVDs on my Apple TV
