After all, nothing gives a better picture of a solution than a speed test.
Whenever you set out to choose a product, you will hanker for the fastest, cheapest and the most reliable tool out there. Hands down – that’s what everyone of us is looking for.
The idea behind this post is to make your life a little easier & compare 2 apps. Both tools are popular ways to put a movie on iPad and iPhone.
Here’s the Scenario:
You’re getting ready for your next journey. You’ve got ten minutes to go – and all you want is to quickly push a movie or two to your iPad or iPhone. Of course, we all get bored as hell during a flight or a train trip.
Chances are high that your movie will be either MKV or AVI (those are popular formats on the web). And those – are not supported by iPhone or iPad.
To resolve the matter, you either have to convert your movie to MP4 with Handbrake and then sync it with iTunes or – to transfer it with WALTR.
Way 1. iTunes + Handbrake
As we mentioned before, MKV is a non-starter format for iPad or iPhone. You can’t play it back on IOS, neither can you sync it with iTunes.
And it’s not just MKV, there are so many other formats that are simply not compatible (AVI, WMA, FLAC, CUE). To play them back on your iPhone & iPad – Apple makes you convert them to MP4 or MP3 first.
That’s why we’ll be converting our movie to MP4 with the old watcher – Handbrake. And then sync with iTunes.
1.1. The Handbrake.
We were dealing with 1,9 GB movie ’The Nice Guys’ (starring Russel Crowe, btw). It’s packed in MKV container and encoded with h.264 codec.
All the experiments were conducted on the 13-inch early 2013 MacBook Air running on MacOS Sierra.
The time spent: 21 minutes 53 seconds. + frozen computer.
1.2. iTunes
Finally, iTunes can see the outcome file. By connecting iPod touch to the computer, we can sync it to the device.
It took: 2 mins 10 secs
In total – 24 mins 3 secs
WAY 2. WALTR.
If you’re looking for a a more straight forward way to get the job done, WALTR breaks free from the format barriers created by Apple. It’s a Mac & Windows iTunes alternative we were waiting for.
You are getting your file for native playback on your iPhone – simply by dragging it to the drop-zone.
The time spent: 1 minute 28 secs
There are no format restrictions that you are chained to. Pay a closer look at the way WALTR handles uncompatible formats in the little screencast video down below:
In the end – we came up with the little table to summarise both ways & help you decide:
Summin’ up:
Now, it’s time for the verdict, your honour. What workaround is more user-friendly? Let us know in the comments!
Julia Nash
Apple junkie at Softorino
