What's the best way to deal with wmv files on iPad

Question

I have bunch of training videos, mostly in .wmv format on my computer. Well, I tried to find a player in appstore to watch those videos right away, without converting them - I couldn't find any good one. Anyway I thought that converting all that files would be a solution. Then I could watch them in default player.

For many reasons it's turned out not to be that straightforward and in reality is quite arduous task.

First of all folders hierarchy - itunes just ignore that. I needed to find a way to put all that files into one directory without loosing their order (remember it's training video lessons, so it's very important). I've managed to put all files into one folder and named them like 0001_lesson.wmv, 0002_lesson.wmv and so on.

Converter. I tried four different ones, I tried different settings, tried to convert into different formats. And still the folder that initially contained about 350Mb data after conversion grows into something huge with almost 1Gb data.

How come? I don't believe that wmv is so good, that it can be several times smaller than other video formats.

Maybe converters I'm trying aren't the good ones. Which one do you think the best? Is there any easier way to solve that problem? And please don't tell me to use streaming and airplay stuff. I watch those videos mostly when I'm in the subway.

Answer 1

Did you tried Oplayer ?

Didn't tried it with wmv but works perfectly for me on my iPad 1, with mkv and other formats, even with subtitles. I would love to try it on iPad 2 to see if the new CPU handles 720p videos :)

VLC for iOS was promising before it was removed... sigh. :/

Update 2018: VLC for Mobile is available in Apple Store.

Answer 2

Have you tried VisualHub? It is highly recommeded by a lot of high profile Mac websites.

http://www.machoe.com/1565/visual-hub-free-mac-video-convertero.html

You have probably tried handbrake.

http://handbrake.fr/

Both of these are fairly good, and honestly a lot of the times conversion is fraught with pitfalls because we are the ones who get to choose the video size and codec rates, I like handbrake because it does template out the iOS devices for you, which removes a lot of the headache.

Answer 3

I use Air Video to play .wmv files stored on my Mac across the network to my iPad 1 and also on an iPod touch. It does the necessary conversion on the fly on the Mac. I believe it can also work from a PC server but I don't know that from personal experience.