VLC for iOS Update Plays EyeTV Recordings

With one little step – instead of re-encoding – you can drop your EyeTV recordings onto your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

When the first VLC Media Player (itunes link) app for iPad came out I tried dropping an EyeTV recording into it – including the container file. No dice – the file wasn’t recognized. I tried an EyeTV container with the new release of VLC for iPad too – but it still wasn’t recognized. But right-clicking on the container and showing its contents allowed me to copy the mpg file residing within onto the iPad. VLC for iPad recognized the mpg and played it. The initial release didn’t work for the EyeTV mpg either.

The .eyetv file is much larger than what you’d get if you encoded it for your i-device. But for a video I plan to watch once and delete I’m happy to skip the encoding.

The VLC app doesn’t use the standard playback components provided in iOS APIs – like the player you’d see in an app such as Dropbox. For example, my Bluetooth keyboard playback controls don’t work in VLC for iPad.

Playback isn’t as tight as m4v files I’ve played back using Dropbox and other apps, but it’s not terrible either. Definitely not as clear as playing back an .eyetv file on my Mac – but again – that’s ok, there’s some value in getting a video onto my iOS device without encoding it – sometimes it’s worth the tradeoff.

That said, I just loaded a short scene from an action movie, recorded in standard definition, to my iPhone 4.  Playback was a bit pixelated.

VLC for iOS does keep track of where you left off watching a video. And it’s free.  The VLC Media Player is nice to have for times when encoding isn’t otherwise necessary.

Delete by the Word

Just when you thought you knew every keyboard shortcut someone finds another. OS X Daily posted about using Option+Delete to delete by the word instead of by the character. While looking over that post I followed a link to another suggesting ways to complete the word you’re typing, in OS X. In many applications you can hit the escape key after entering a few letters to see the suggestions. While typing this blog post in WordPress via Safari I had to use Option-Esc to see the list.

If I ever knew that I’d forgotten.