iPad/iPhone App of the Week: Air Video

Every now and then an App or website comes along that solves perfectly a need you have but that you didn't know a solution existed for.

And for me that App is Air Video...

You see I have an extensive collection of movies stored on an external hard drive...far to many to add to iTunes and in any case, most are in .avi format which iTunes doesn't like.

To watch those videos I have to copy them to the machine where I want to watch them usually via a memory stick or a network transfer and play using an application like the VLC player.

And then along comes the iPad and of course I'm thinking, well, I want to watch those videos on the iPad but I don't want to have to convert them to an iTunes compatible format and sync to the iPad every time I want to watch a particular movie.

What to do, what to do...

Then I see a brief tweet by Don McAllister from Screencasts online saying that there is an iPad version of Air video.

And I'm thinking...could this solve my problem?

And amazingly, it did. I CAN'T believe this app has existed for the iPhone for ages and now there is an iPad version and it works PERFECTLY and I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT!

After having downloaded the app to the iPhone or iPad and installed a software application on the computer where the videos are stored (and identified folders containing the videos) you simply navigate to the server on the iPad (or iPhone) in the Air Video App, select the video and hit play (for videos in an Apple friendly format like .mp4). For videos in a non-Apple friendly format you select play with live conversion and the server will convert the file before streaming to your device on-the-fly.

And it works and it is beautiful and I can watch my videos on my iPhone or iPad wherever I want to be.

I can't recommend this App highly enough if, like me, you have lots of videos you don't want to sync to your mobile devices via iTunes.

I don't think I can suggest any improvements at all. The App works perfectly right from installation.

Kudos to the developers.

Guru Bob

ps now if only there were a version of Air Video I could run on my laptop...hint hint.

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