iTunes won't sync my camera movies to my iPad

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Level 3

660 points

iTunes won't sync my camera movies to my iPad

Hey gang-

Okay- this thread encompasses the iPad, iTunes, and iPhoto, so I honestly wasn't sure where to post it. But here goes.

iTunes (v11.1.3) refuses to sync movies that are in my iPhoto albums to my iPad 2. It gives an error that files "abc.mov" were not synced to the iPad because the iPad can't play them. The movie files all originated on my Canon Digital Elph 310 camera.

Well, I absolutely know the iPad will play them because originally I had downloaded the movies from my camera directly to the iPad with the iPad Camera Connection kit. And they played fine.

Later, once I had organized my albums in iPhoto, I deleted the downloaded files from my iPad and synced with iTunes. I got the photos to sync, but not the movies that are in the same albums.

The movies play great in iPhoto, but I can't get them to sync to my iPad. Anyone found a fix for this?

Thanks!

Dave

Posted on Jan 2, 2014 11:07 PM

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Answer 1

Dave_K. Author

Level 3

660 points

Jan 3, 2014 4:42 PM in response to Dave_K.

Hey gang-

Mystery solved- and I'm replying to my own post in case this helps somebody.

The bottom line appears to be that iTunes won't allow you to sync a video to an iPad if the resolution of that video exceeds the resolution of the iPad. (This might seems smart on Apple's part, but like I said, these high-resolution videos played perfectly on my iPad when imported directly with the iPad Camera Connection kit.)

So, in my case, I'm running an iPad 2 with native resolution of 1024x768. My Canon Digital Elph 310HS camera shoots video at full 1080P- 1920x1080 to be specific.

I tested this today by shooting 3 videos on the Canon- the first at the default of 1920x1080, the second at 1280x720, and the last at 640x480. I then imported them into iPhoto and put them in a new Album. I then synced that album to my iPad. Yep- only the last two videos imported to the iPad during the sync.

Since my post, I see many threads here describing this same problem. So how had I not noticed it in years of iPhoto and iPad use? Simple- I hadn't tried to sync an album before with a high-resolution video from my relatively new Canon.

I would also suspect that anyone running any of the newer iPads with Retina displays would not have this problem since they natively support full 1080P. I have no way of testing that however.

Oh- one more thing. 😉

If you really want to get those 1080p videos onto your iPad 2, here's how I did it. And in doing so underscored how screwy this iTunes sync limitation is. I popped an SD card into my iMac and in iPhoto selected File->Reveal in Finder. I then copied the videos to the SD card. I then popped the SD card into the adapter on my iPad Camera Connection kit. Voila! The full 1080p videos play beautifully on my iPad 2. The whole thing took less time to do than to describe it here.

Well, hope this helps somebody!

Dave

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Answer 2

mrbofus

Level 2

257 points

Jan 3, 2014 4:49 PM in response to Dave_K.

Dave, unfortunately, that is not the only answer. While that may have solved it in your case, as I have posted previously in another thread, the solution in my case was that the video needed to be exported to iTunes from QuickTime. I have an iPad (3rd-gen) so any of the last three iPads would be unaffected if your analysis was 100% correct, since they all have Retina displays. With a resolution of 2048x1536, none of the last 3 iPads should have any issues, by your argument, but they do. Not to mention, the iPhone takes higher resolution video than its own display can support, but those sometimes work fine transferring back to the iPhone after being in Aperture.

Not to mention, your solution isn't a solution in terms of syncing. You are able to playback the videos on your iPad using your method, but you are not syncing the videos from your computer at all if you're just reading them off a SD card on your iPad.

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Answer 3

Dave_K. Author

Level 3

660 points

Jan 3, 2014 5:01 PM in response to mrbofus

mrbofus wrote:

...your solution isn't a solution in terms of syncing. You are able to playback the videos on your iPad using your method, but you are not syncing the videos from your computer at all if you're just reading them off a SD card on your iPad.

We are in complete agreement there- and that is why I said it points out how screwy this iTunes syncing limitation is. Videos that demonstrably will play on the iPad won't sync.

It doesn't surprise me that this problem is many-faceted. Sorry to hear it still plagues the higher-resolution iPads. As I said though, I had no way of knowing, but I was simply crossing my fingers for our friends here with the higher-resolution devices.

In any case, I will be happy, as I said, if this does help somebody solve at least one aspect of this issue.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Dave

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