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Wes Plate Author

Level 4

2,859 points

Movie "was not copied... because it cannot be played on this iPad.

I have a movie that I ripped a long time ago to play on my AppleTV but since I still haven't gotten around to watching it I'm going to put the movie on my iPad.

In iTunes, I drag the movie onto the iPad to copy it (I am manually managing) and I get this error:

"[movie] was not copied to the iPad [name] because it cannot be played on this iPad."

So I select the movie and from iTunes' Advanced menu I choose "Make an iPod/Apple TV version" and I get the error:

"One or more videos were not converted because they are already in the correct format."

So I'm in a loop.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Disclaimer: I benefit financially from any purchase you make from Automatic Duck

Posted on Apr 6, 2010 7:34 PM

46 replies

May 22, 2010 3:12 AM in response to Bazaar

Bazaar wrote:
My new request to the developers would be to remove that arbitrary restriction on AVC level from iTunes, or at the very least change it to a warning dialog saying "+The movie may not work *FOR XYZ REASON*, but proceed anyway+".

Have you sent this to Apple? We're mostly just users like yourself in here 🙂

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Regards,
Colin R.

Bazaar

Level 1

0 points

May 22, 2010 3:29 AM in response to Colin Robinson

I will try that, Colin. Thank you for the link. I'm the type of person that would try to crumble mountains by tapping on them with a tuning fork - and I must admit this problem was particularly vexing.

I'm certain the restriction was intentional, however - so I may only be pointing out the obvious. Nonetheless, I appreciate your positive input, and will try submitting a suggestion. 🙂

mgabrys

Level 1

0 points

Jun 2, 2010 11:15 PM in response to Bazaar

Holy crap you rock! I haven't hex-edited since the 80s - but since the file I had was worthless after an unsuccessful muxxing attempt, I did your trick - and BAM - back in business. iTunes and Quicktime liked the file fine, my iPad wouldn't touch it.

I use OSX so if you're a on a mac try the free editor "Hex Fiend".

Just do a find (command F) for the hex series he mentioned, then change the appropriate byte - then remove it from the library and put it back in. Boom - piece of CAKE!

Haven't had this much fun since back when I was a game tester and found some passcodes in hex and remapped a client in an early FPS shooter and created havoc on a beta-test during April Fools day (removed all the walls on my map - and played ghost with everyone).

Thanks again!

Jun 20, 2010 12:35 AM in response to Bazaar

I love you so much right now.

You have no idea how frustrated I was getting, this works AMAZING.

I will name my second child after you.

Jul 20, 2010 6:17 AM in response to [Cyanide]

I just got my new ipad and ran into this problem. It seams like a big limitation/annoyance. One thing I find odd is I can email a video to the ipad and it will play fine through the ipad mail, but try to sync the same video and I get the error message.

Jeff

Oct 23, 2010 9:17 PM in response to Bazaar

This solution worked a treat for me, except I found that files encoded as "Apple/Universal" in handbreak have these header packets at the end of the file, not the beginning.

Here's a Python script which automates the patching process.

http://hx.net.au/ipadfix.py

Just *chmod u+x ipadfix.py* and run it from the command line with the file to be patched as the only argument, ie:

*./ipadfix.py mymovie.mp4*

On windows, install Python and then run it like:

*python ipadfix.py mymovie.mp4*

And presto, your file is patched! This will still work for files which have the metadata at the beginning of the file, but will take a LONG time. It's already pretty slow (around 15 seconds to find the data), but I never wrote anything in Python before, so if someone knows a faster way, let me know! Bazaar, thanks for sharing the research results!

Nov 19, 2010 9:26 AM in response to Bazaar

Great tip! I've run into the same problem. This saves a lot of headaches and time. Sometimes why software designers/engineers do things they was they do is simply inexplicable! Who knows what Apple was thinking when they implemented this new way of handling movies. Previously all my movies synced with my iPad without problem. Now we must resort to things like what you have come up with to circumvent this.

Dec 5, 2010 5:37 PM in response to mcneildeal

I have many video files that I have collected over time. Some are in a MP4 format and some in the M4V format. I can play both formats in iTunes, but only the M4V formats will transfer and play on my iPad.

The solution you discribe seems to be the solution to my problem. I am not very technical, but get around a PC okay. Would you mind providing details about how I might use the Python program and run the script against my MP4 files. Is it possible to run this in a batch? I have a few hundred files. Thank you in advance!!

edc1591

Level 1

0 points

Dec 16, 2010 9:46 AM in response to Bazaar

This does not seem to work with my iPod touch 4G. I have a few hundred TV show episodes in High@L4.1. They play fine on my Apple TV 2 and also play fine in air sharing on my iPod without conversion. I tried modifying it to Main@L3.1 and iTunes still didn't transfer the video. Any ideas?

Thanks

edc1591

Level 1

0 points

Dec 21, 2010 6:34 PM in response to Wes Plate

anyone?

Dec 21, 2010 6:41 PM in response to edc1591

Your in the iPad forum... You need to post in the iPod forum.

Message was edited by: David M Brewer

Sep 29, 2011 10:32 PM in response to Bazaar

I can confirm that this fixed it for me. I had the trouble on a movie ripped from handbrake 0.9.5 on vista premium. The hex for profile and audio where different than you listed. I used the Ipod touch and Iphone preset and it would not sync. Changing the value allowed it to sync and the file played fine.

Nov 5, 2011 1:29 PM in response to Wes Plate

Not sure if you resolved your issue yet but I was having the same thing happen and it turned out to be that I needed to update to the latest version of QuickTime on my pc. Once I did that all my videos synced to my iPad 2 fine. Hope this helps.

Dec 19, 2011 4:05 AM in response to Wes Plate

I have this problem...

The Inbetweeners Movie file will not play on my iMac with the latest version of itunes & quicktime stating it cannot be played because it is incompatible with quicktime and this version of itunes.
In addition I purchased the HD version which should come with an iPad/iPhone ready SD version. When i attempt to copy this film to the ipad or iphone in itunes, it states this file is not compatible.
If I attempt to convert the film for iPad use using Advanced > Create iPad or Apple TV Version, I receive the error "An unknown error occurred (-4)
The Inbetweeners Movie is a brand new release which should mean that it is in the latest and most compatible file formats
My Ipad is running version 5.0.1 (9A405)
My iMac is running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C74)
My ITunes version is 10.5.2 (11) 64Bit
My Quicktime Player app is version 10.1 (501.5)
This is my second re-download attempt and has the same problem as the first.

Any ideas?

Pedaler

Level 1

9 points

Apr 8, 2012 8:00 AM in response to Bazaar

On May 22, 2010 4:45 AM, Bazaar writes this:

> By changing literally ONE byte out of 1 giga byte file, I was able to transfer my movies to my iPad.

I just confirmed that this solution still works.

Hex "61 76 63 43" ("avcC" in ASCII) was near the bottom of the file.

The next byte after that was "01"

I ignored the next two bytes ("42 E0" = Baseline, "4D 40" = Main, "58 A0" = Extended, "64 00" = High, or similar).

"The next byte declares AVC Level ("1F" = Level 3.1, "29" = Level 4.1, "33" = Level 5.1)"

I changed this byte to "1F" in hex and saved.

The file transfered fine to a 2nd generation iPod Touch.

NOTE: The iTunes option (Advanced / Create iPod or iPhone Version) still works as well, but I found that (1) it did take some time, but only ~10 minutes on 3GHz Core 2 Duo, and (2) the resulting file was nearly 2x the size (~800Mb) of the iPod/iPhone version that Handbrake produced (~440Mb) using the iPod conversion settings.

Movie "was not copied... because it cannot be played on this iPad.