Watching movies on the new iPad is pretty great. Getting those movies onto the iPad isn’t quite so great, especially if you live in a country that doesn’t sell iTunes movies, or if you rip your own DVDs. The forthcoming 3.0 version of It’s Playing for iPad, though, not only plays pretty much any movie format without having to re-encode it on your computer first, it also puts in some amazing new features not seen anywhere else.
The coolest new feature is built-in subtitle support. Almost iPad every movie player supports subtitles, but this is the only one which lets you download them from within the app. Tap the “i” button to get to the settings screen for the current movie, tap “Fetch subtitles from the internet” and a list will pop up. This works best if you keep the original filename of, say, TV shows you downloaded.
Next up is “CSI style video forensics.” Now you can pinch-to-zoom, and use a slider to adjust playback speed, with the audio pitch changing to match. This is in addition to the gesture-controls for skipping the movie, the picture adjustment controls and volume boost already included.
You can also stream movies over the network. I have a USB hard drive filled with movies connected to my Time Capsule. It’s Playing will remember passwords and either stream video or download it to your device. This saves iPad storage space, and also lets you stream without leaving your Mac switched on.
I had some issues with sound on one or two movies when streaming them, but I’m testing a beta.
Now you can open iOS compatible movies and HD MKV movies as well as as well as all the AVIs you could before, and send video via Airplay mirroring, VGA, composite or HDMI (with the right adapters).
I like it quite a lot, and it might become my go-to video player for the subtitle support alone. It’s Playing is available now for $2, and the 3.0 update should hit early next week.
