Any way to drag and drop movies onto iPad?

You can manually manage music and videos with an iPad but with music and videos available in iTunes only.

The iPad does not support disk mode and even if it did allowing you to transfer a movie to your iPad, this would be for data transfer purposes only such as transferring the movie from one computer to another. The Movie would not be available via the iPod on the iPad. The only way to get music and video available for access with the iPod function is by transferring the content from iTunes - by the sync process or by manually managing music and videos with music and videos available in iTunes.

Another alternative you might investigate is a device called the "Airstash". It is marketed as a wireless flash drive but really uses SD cards. It will allow you to stream videos and music (as well as other types of files) direct from the device without using iTunes. Here is the link to the site:

www.airstash.com

Thanks, lowboydrvr, for that link. I hadn't heard of the Airstash and ordered one immediately. It sounds like just the thing for virtually unlimited storage.

I got my AirStash a couple of days ago and while it's a nifty and very useful device, it isn't perfect. The wireless aspect of it works very well, but the file system only works through a browser web app and that web app is very limited in what it can do. It will play audio through its built-in player, but working with playlists is very awkward. It will also play video, but there's a several-minute delay while it buffers and the player isn't exactly full-featured. The AirStash hands off text and ebook files to a selection of applications it thinks can read them. That works fine in most cases, but I've noticed that Stanza thinks ePub files coming from the AirStash have DRM and refuses to open them.

I'm glad I bought the thing and will certainly use it, but I'll be waiting for software improvements.

Hi

I use the GoodReader App. Lets you transfer movies, pdfs, jpeg etc over wifi from your Mac. Plays them back fine and doesn't use iTunes for the transfer.
Just make sure your movie is in a format iPad likes

regards

Lee

Air Video for streaming videos from you desktop top. Drop Box... Goodreader...

Any stats on AirStash battery life?

If I understand you right then ImTOO iPad Mate may help as it has an alternative interface to iTunes for loading your content. I use it for burning and transfering movies that I have on DVD.

It is no problem to drag and drop anything you want directly to the iPad when the iPad is connected to iTunes. There is no need to add to iTunes Library then sync. Works for any iTunes compatible format and gets categorized that way (pdf to iBooks, mp4 to Movies, etc.).

This works great for iPad only use, but not as a transfer method. So not good to add something to iPad then expect to transfer to Mac later. GoodReader mentioned in this post is excellent for transferring and viewing multiple types of files. It supports both iTunes file transfer and wifi.

AirVideo is also excellent if you want to stream movies over your LAN directly from the hard drive they currently live on. Again, there is no reason to import to iTunes and make a playlist or to download to iPad.

My Movies app is free and let's movies to be copied by wifi. Also yxplayer through iTunes.