iPad Jailbreaking Update ...
Monday, May 31, 2010 at 1:24PM I may have been a bit hasty in my criticism of iPad jailbreaking yesterday as I received some comments that others had not experienced the instability that I had noticed. I can only call it as I find it, your mileage may vary.
My solution to the situation (as some of you may have already noted from my tweets yesterday) was to invest in a second iPad, one I can jailbreak and use purely for creating video tutorials. Having a second iPad may seem excessive but its a good way to keep my personal stuff and demo software separate for the show.
On a Mac it's not too difficult as you can setup multiple users to demonstrate software, even multiple drives which is the way I've approached it.
I have two drives in my MacBook Pro, an SSD drive for normal usage, and a 500GB hard drive with a separate OSX Installation. Whenever I need to record for a show, I boot off the second drive and I have a completely separate environment, email system, 1password setup, etc. So now with a "demo" iPad, I can configure that to sync with my ScreenCastsOnline demo Mac and all is well.
I ended up deciding to go for a UK 32GB WiFi and 3G model, although to be honest, I don't really need the 3G as I have my MiFi unit for internet on the go! I just figured that it would be best to have both a WiFi model and a 3G model for future proofing.
So now I have a second iPad, I can safely jailbreak that and not worry too much about the instability. As long as it doesn't crash out on me when demoing a single product, I can live with that, but even if it does require a restart now and again, no hardship!
Now the problem is, if I can get a VGA signal out of the iPad at 1024x768, how do I actually capture that into the Mac to create a high res movie?
I have a Matrox MXO2 capture box but that won't support such a low resolution - in fact, most of the modern capture cards only support SD or HD resolutions.
The only option I've found is a USB device called the VGA2USB LR from Ephihan Systems. They do a cheaper version called the VGA2USB but the LR captures at a much higher frame rate. It's not cheap at £555 plus VAT, but as luck would have it, I found someone in Australia selling one on eBay for half the price! It's now arrived in the UK but still stuck in customs.
So a fairly (very!) expensive solution to create high res iPad tutorials, but it's my living and the kit is tax deductible.
I'll let you know how it all works out!
Reader Comments (6)
It's so frustrating because there's obviously a way to do it as Steve shows at the Keynote without the expense and instability. Same for the iPhone. I'd assume that it's not even a special build of 3.2 but that the capability - as with many others as history shows - is currently disabled.
Technology is a demanding and expensive mistress.
Dear Don, I just wanted to post a reminder for everyone : 3G option for iPad carries also GPS chipset... so, though 3G is not paramount in most use case, GPS can be very interesting... Many thanks for your superb job in favor of OSX platform...
Hi Don,
Would be interested to hear your experiences with the VGA2USB LR from Ephihan. Personally I hope someone will create a Capture App when iPhone OS 4.0 comes out. Should be a lot easier then.
Oh wait a minute, maybe I should start programming myself :-)
Regards,
Stefaan
I'm going to teach some old people in the use of the iPad.. I just wonder what app makes the white tap dots on the screen. What programs do you use when you capture the screen.
I have to use a jailbroken iPad, and run DisplayOut.