Multimedia Player

 Description

Multimedia Player

Many of you have noted that the app is only designed for audio, but multimedia files are not properly supported. So far that appears to be limited to audio files, but there may be an avenue for proper multimedia playback as the next release is likely to include all formats. Just as with iWatch's Multimedia Player, it's worth pointing out that Apple still does not allow multitasking on the iPhone. They've put limits on the iPhone to discourage us from multitasking with apps, and they could easily do the same with the iOS media player. That's an issue I've wanted fixed for a while, but I believe it will come in a future release. Share Apple has given us a lot of nifty sharing features with iOS 5. That's also the reason I think Apple isn't allowing multitasking in the iOS media player. If Apple has to make it stop while they're working on new features, it's probably just not worth the headache. I was happy to see that Apple finally added instant copy and paste, which should be something a lot of people are looking for. The recipient should be the first app you want to share a file. But if the files are not stored in iDisk and are in the same directory with your iPhone, the iOS device will throw an error. Some of the media player restrictions are also likely tied to Apple's new push to push media playback through iCloud. Apple has made a lot of noise about streaming all your content directly from iCloud through iTunes Match. I want to be able to watch my multimedia files on my iPad while it's charging on the nightstand, but in order to do that I have to be on the same Wi-Fi network with my iPad. That wouldn't really work with Apple's push to have users have a single, portable device for their music and video files. The media player limits probably don't make sense as it would affect most users (you would have to go back to using iDisk) but they likely aren't much of an issue at all for people streaming music and videos from iTunes. Multimedia Player - Text Version MultiMedia Player - Text Version - Low Quality Setting up iTunes Match is fairly easy, but when you set up your iPod it still gives you a number of options. In order to save time, I'll show you how to get the most out of iTunes Match using iTunes Connect's built-in media player to stream the content from your iPhone to your iPad. You can turn off iTunes Match's iCloud locker feature if you don't want it. For all other purposes, including streaming, iCloud locker should work perfectly well. Multimedia Player - Setting Up iTunes Match Make sure that you're already signed into iTunes Connect with the same Apple ID you used for your iOS device. You can skip that step if you're trying to start with the iPad's iDisk on the iPad's SD card. Apple's new player for iTunes Match has a big button to start playing media files on the iPad. On the iPad this is where you go to watch your content, and it's also where you go to launch the player if you're just copying files. When you first open the player you have a few options, but only the default will work with the iPad's iDisk. I've added the link to iDisk here because iDisk isn't available for iOS 5 yet. Apple's new streaming feature is called iTunes Match Media Player, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining it. Just make sure you have iTunes running on your iPad with iDisk attached and select the right button when you launch iTunes Match's media player for playback. I don't think most people will need to use iCloud Drive or make use of the iCloud document viewer since they can already save files to iDisk. It's a nice feature, but I don't think anyone is going to feel much of a need to connect their iPad and iPhone over a Wi-Fi network and save their multimedia files to iCloud. You do have a lot of options for streaming files from iCloud, but you're only going to care about a few of them (namely the music player and the Dropbox uploader). You'll probably just want to save your multimedia files to iDisk and have iTunes Match stream them directly from the iTunes Media Store (you can download some free movies here). Once you have the right buttons, start streaming. If you're trying to use the media player on your iPhone with the iPhone 5 you'll notice that it doesn't use iTunes' default playback controls. It's probably because Apple hasn't yet made those controls available to the media player, but it also doesn't use any of the widgets that it uses on its mobile OS. To get your multimedia files in iTunes Match, select the files you want to upload from your iPhone or iPad and drag them into the media player window. Be sure to copy all of the player's properties (title, artist, album, track, and so on) before you drag files into the player window. This is how iTunes Match looks on an iPhone 5 running iOS 5, and it does work just fine. You can also easily set the video playback to a lower quality, but you won't be able to do that for audio. When you change the audio quality you still get the option to switch to lower audio quality. Once you have your media files in iTunes Match you can actually open iTunes. This is how iTunes Match looks in a specific folder on your iPhone. You can also change this folder's location in the configuration panel (if you're using iTunes on your iPad) but you won't be able to change the iTunes Match folder on your iPad's SD card.

I mentioned above that you can turn off iCloud locker if you don't want it. This is a feature for paying customers and all other users will see it. However, this feature has no effect on the playback function of the media player. If you have multiple player profiles you'll have to switch between them when you play music from iTunes Match, but you won't have to remove the files

By Mohabbat Khan