VLC Media Player iPad App Hands-On Preview – Play AVI/MKV Video On Apple’s Tablet!

Written by John Thompson on September 15, 2010 · Filed under Software 

If you thought that I was excited about CineXPlayer iPad app, the first media player allowed on the App Store that is capable of playing back non-Apple video formats, then you haven’t witnessed anything yet…Upon learning that a French developer had submitted an iPad version of VLC media player, I was immediately excited about being able to play my library of TV shows and movies on the iPad tablet without having to convert them first.

Although VLC has been submitted to Apple for approval, the likelihood of it being accepted are extremely slim compared to that of the VLC Remote iPhone App, but there is still one hell of a jailbreak community out there, so it could still end up on a store such as Cydia if Apple don’t want it on their App Store.

I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the VLC iPad app before its official release from the developer, and it shows a lot of promise and potential, despite being a little rough around the edges. Let’s take a look at it, shall we?

User Interface

The interface of VLC for iPad couldn’t be further from the desktop version at this point. Whereas the desktop version of VLC offers a mass of functionality but doesn’t have much to show in the eye candy department, the developers of VLC for iPad have clearly taken some cues from Apple’s iBooks. When you open the VLC app, you’re presented with a bookshelf backdrop which contains a library of all your videos.

Other useful information is also given to you here as well. Underneath the video thumbnail, you have the title of the video so you know what you’re looking at. Also present is extra information such as resolution, the size of the video and the length too. If the video is in HD, there is also a tag over the thumbnail.

When playing back a video, the overlay controls appear similar to the built in video player of the iPad. At the bottom, you have standard play, next, and previous buttons above the volume slider, and a countdown of how long is left in the video. There is also a button in the top left hand corner of the screen, which is somewhat ambiguously labelled “OK”. This closes the video and returns to the menu.

Video Playback

When testing video playback using VLC for the iPad, I decided to put two video formatted files on the iPad: one .avi video and one .mkv video. Both formats are accepted without any issue by VLC, and allow playback on the device, however, 720p playback isn’t watchable yet. This is more to do with the power of the iPad than anything, because VLC uses software to decode the video formats, whereas Apple’s own video player has hardware assisted decoding.

I also noticed that there is sometimes an audio and video sync problem, although this can be resolved by exiting the video and relaunching it; VLC remembers where you were before you closed the application, so you don’t miss anything or have to manually get back to your place.

Conclusion

Whether these are issues that the developer will be able to resolve soon, I don’t know, but we’ll hopefully see a little more refinement a few updates down the line. It’s also important to remember that this is an early version of the VLC Media Player iPad App, there are bound to be a few kinks to work out.

At this stage, I’m just incredibly excited by the prospect of regularly playing MKV and other video files on my Apple iPad without any conversion necessary, and that is huge!

I’d like to thank the developer of VLC for iPad for giving us the chance to check out this fantastic application prior to its release.