Videos

You can change the Video settings on your device to customize video playback. On the iPod touch and iPad, these are accessed from Settings >Videos, on the iPhone from Settings >iPod. You’ll see the following options:


• Start Playing: This controls where a video starts playing after you stop it and then come back to it. You have two choices: Where Left Off or From Beginning.
• Closed Captioning: When you slide this setting towards the ON position, you will see subtitles for TV shows and movies if they include Closed Captioning.

• Widescreen: This setting turns on widescreen support for your TV. Great if you have a widescreen TV to play your videos.
• TV Signal: This sets your specific TV output signal.

It’s great to be able to watch videos on your device, but unless you have an iPad, it can get tiring watching TV shows or movies on a tiny screen. The good news is that you can play your videos through a TV. You’ll have to buy a special cable to do this, but they aren’t that expensive. Here are three cables you can use to connect your iOS device to your TV.

• Apple Composite AV Cable ($39): Lets you connect your iOS device to the composite inputs on a TV. The cable also has audio and USB connectors.
• Apple Component AV Cable ($39): Lets you connect your iOS device to the component inputs on a TV.

The ability to watch movies and TV shows on your iOS device is one of its many great features. Here’s how you do it:


To play a movie or TV show:

1. Open Videos. (On the iPhone, Videos is located in the iPod app.)

2. Tap on the video or TV show you would like to watch. (If a second cover screen pops up, tap again.)
3. If the movie/show does not automatically start playing, tap on the Play button.


To control the playback of your movie or TV show:

• Tap on Done at the top left corner of the screen to close the video player.
• Tap and hold the fast-forward or rewind buttons to move the video backwards or forwards.

All iOS devices; requires an Internet connection


Watching movies on your iOS device can be a satisfying experience (especially on the iPad). However, when you buy your device, there’s nothing on it. You need to download movies and TV shows using iTunes. Here’s how you do it:


You’ve recorded the next Oscar-winning video, and now you need to share it with the world! Fortunately, iOS gives you three ways to do so:


Share videos using e-mail:


Any iOS device with a camera


iPhone and iPad 2


Watching an unedited video is like eating a gourmet dish straight from the pot: there may be good stuff in there, but it sure doesn’t look good. Your iPhone gives you the ability to do basic editing, and it beats having to transfer the file to your computer and opening up some editing software to fiddle with it. Here’s how to edit videos on your iPhone:

Your device comes with basic editing capabilities such as Trim.

If your inner Spielberg is bursting to get out, your iOS device can help you every step of the process. You not only can watch movies and TV shows, you can record videos on your iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 2 and 4th generation iPod touch. In addition, you can edit video with the help of Apple’s iMovie ($4.99, app2.me/2551) and a number of third-party apps. Here are some of ways to take advantage of your device’s camera and video playback features. (Note that the iPad 2 was announced when this issue went to press. The new device has cameras and the Camera app built into it, and a version of iMovie will be available for it.