Getting Files FROM Ipads etc.

rayc

retroreprobate
My school has spent money on iPads for film making etc.
Currently my class are producing films using these devices in small groups.
They have to submit the finished film to a state competition.
They have yet to add their foley and dialogue to the projects and we'll have to navigate using "garageband" to record these aspects.
All of which is subject to my learning how to do stuff in advance of the kids.
My big problem at present is getting the projects completed film and indeed files from the iPuds other devices in the school - we're basically a PC school but with a bank of iPuds to "engage" the "touchscreen"/"app", "smartphone" generation.
We can't "airdrop" files to a PC as far as I know, the iPuds don't have USB etc. It, to me, just as bad as when the iMac 1st came out when CDRs and USB drives weren't commonly & economically available.
H E L P !!!!
 
GarageBand for iOS can only export sound files or GarageBand projects for import to the Mac version of GarageBand. You can mute all channels but one then email yourself the result, or play and record the output using a cable direct to the PC's audio input, then rinse and repeat for all channels. Or you can invest in a Mac and the full version of GarageBand. It would be nice if you could go to the Apps screen in iTunes and find a list of audio and MIDI files to copy to your PC but it just doesn't work that way. It only works the Apple way.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but someone should really have researched all this before making the initial outlay. It might have been better to get a number of MS Surface 3s and cheap/free DAW software like Reaper.
 
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but someone should really have researched all this before making the initial outlay.

This happens all too often . . . someone gets seduced by the trendy stuff and forgets to figure out how it is going to be used and what it needs to be able to do.
 
Thanks Garryknight & Gekozzed,
As I suspected.
I advised against the iPuds and warned about propriety and locked in issues and was overruled by eagerness - again.
Now I have to try to make the best of it. I'm the tech person for all the PC gear, (80+ computers & lap tops plus 12 IWBs), and one of the keen folk of Appleness is in charge of the iPuds but isn't available to problem solve beyond downloading "apps".
It's very frustrating - we have 5 different movies made in iMuvie in my room - each on a specific machine, (none can be moved outside Apple land). The kids have to swap machines and record the foley for another group, initially planned for G'band as it runs on the machines but logic now suggests it's not going to work, before final editing and publishing. Next we have to get the completed projects OUT & there's no way except email & the dept. Education's system won't support an email bigger than 8 meg.
FRUSTRATION!!!
Thanks for the help.
 
It doesn't help you move on-going projects around but you CAN get individual audio and .mov files off an iPhone or iPad by using the dreaded iTunes to copy them as a back up. Once they exist on a hard drive on your PC (or, I assume a Mac/Macbook) you can then handle them like any file.

FYI, I've just finished the video edit from hell for a friend of a friend--all the video was shot on iPhones, usually in Portrait orientation, but by transferring the originals I was able to edit on my PC in Premiere Pro and Audition.

Not ideal, but if you can grab them before to much work is done on an iPad you can at least collaborate in the non-iOS environment. It would also be a way to get finished projects into the system to submit for marking.

As second possible solution that MIGHT work...there's a DropBox app for iPhones/iPads now that (in theory) lets you sync stuff to another computer, (Mac or PC). Again, the project files won't be transferable but the raw materials were. FYI, we were going to use this method to transfer the files for the edit project above but, in the end, found another method so never did any more than a quick play.
 
Thanks Bobbsy,
I'll copy that info into a word doc so I can refer to it on the next project. iTines eh? I loathe it, the way it takes over machines and the way Crapple use it to manipulate users but needs must!
 
Is there no way to set up a temporary WIFI connection, create a folder on the destination machine, copy everything over to a host for further processing?
 
Schools have this crazy idea that they can teach all sorts on personal devices. The notion kids can make movies or record music on iPads and windows tablets makes me smile, because all they can do is quite basic stuff, and not what people really do. Sure, you can teach the basics of movie making by capturing video on the device, and then doing fairly blunt editing on it. You can record audio in garage band and do similar kinds of stuff, but this is not teaching movie making or recording - it's teaching a process that then has to be re-learned to take it up a level. People who go no further really believe they can put "experienced with movie making" on their CV/resume. Some colleges here do their movie courses using only DSLRs, because they are cheap and easy to use. First time they are given a conventional camera they're totally lost.

Despite what everyone says, touch screens are not the best thing to use for everything!
 
Is there no way to set up a temporary WIFI connection, create a folder on the destination machine, copy everything over to a host for further processing?

There is no everything. It's all internal to iOS GarageBand. And there is no internal filesystem available to users. It's all sandboxed.

All you can do is export a project for importing to Garageband on the Mac or export one or more tracks (channels) as sound files. Bobbsy has the best idea, exporting to iTunes. It would mean soloing one track at a time and exporting the audio, copying it from iTunes to the PC, then repeating this for each track. Maybe simply exporting the entire stereo master would suffice if not much extra processing is needed.

I've tried this myself and found that the resulting MP3 files a) have extra space added at the beginning, and b) don't seem to have tempo information written to them. Or, if they do, it still needed audio bending in Studio One to fit the original tempo.
 
There are files, maybe the point is, available to users. I couldn't imagine not being able to export stems to some storage server.

Usually the empty space is so everything can line up from 0 point. That is the traditional way to export. Each stem renders from 0 to end, import files to new DAW and line up to the left. Go find a decent BPM detector. Lot of work, but couldn't be worse than iTunes.
 
Armistice, DM60, garryknight, rob aylestone, Bobbsy & gecko zzed,
Thanks gents.
I've taken note & copied the suggestions to present to the person responsible for the beasts to sort out.
Putting iTunes on the machines can be done - may already be there as part of the pre installed stuff - but I personally loathe the thing. What this really adds up to is the choice of device has made the "making" of bits of a project relatively easy but the "combining" of elements less so and the transportation of the final job almost impossible in a classroom. We ended up overdubbing inside iMovie which was unsatisfactory but the time frame required a quick finish.
Watched the completed stuff through "apple TV" which is an horrendous device that, I've discovered after several sessions of use, required setting up & logging in, (airdrop/WiFi/internet etc) twice before it'll run a project & then I need to do that all again to run the next project because it's on another pud because we can't download them.
Final assessment - exactly what I told them in the 1st place - not worth the effort.
I had a trainee teacher in last term who knew the machines back to front - as do most late teens. She solved a few problems while she was here and was prepared to sort the whole thing out for the school but sensitivities required that she not - sad isn't it!
 
For the record, I couldn't agree more about iTunes...as far as I'm concerned it's the spawn of Satan. The ONLY reason I have it installed it to get files on and off my phone, both for reasons like the above and also to keep a backup. I wouldn't let it near my system without that need.

(This, of course, give the added complication that because I only open it once or twice a year, every time I do it tells me I need to waste time upgrading it!)
 
Rayc, the guys here seem to have wrung this problem out pretty well but you might just put it to the bods at Sound on Sound? I doubt it but they MIGHT just come up with a magic bullet.

However, I am going to email my daughter about this issue. She teaches Beauty Therapy and other things at Npton Uni and the place is all PC. Her students submit written work to her on USB sticks or email but I can quite see other depts' where the "iInfection" will have taken root and work cannot be or is difficult to transfer. A heads up seems no bad thing?

Dave.
 
I'm recording live music on my iPad using an app called Voice Record Pro. It will capture in .mp4 format. I can convert to .mp3 on the iPad. The app lets me do all kinds of stuff with I/O.

I chose the Google Drive option. From the iPad I can upload the track (or tracks) to my google drive account and then download them to my PC. No email involved, but you do need access to the iNet. Presently I am using Audacity to do simple processing, such as breaking up 45 minutes of tracks into four or five discrete tunes.
 
Yup, another +1 for cloud storage. Would something like Google Drive work? It's how I share needed files between my iPad and PC/laptop. You just get the Google Drive app and save whatever you need into it, and it autosyncs to all devices. Google Drive is pretty nice, because it rarely gives a crap about the types of files it is storing, so you can put basically anything into it.
 
Further: I don't believe there is a limit (that I could find) on the number of devices connected to a single Google Drive account, so you could basically have all of the iPads connected to the same Drive account, and each group of students could have their own folder in the Drive so project files were all separate from one another. Then the only problem would be the amount of storage needed...my free version of Drive limits me to 15 GB, so your school would maybe need to spring for the 100 GB plan (like 2 bucks a month)
 
The Voice Record Pro app has a "send to Google Drive" button. The learning curve is kinda like like dropping a rock - works first try.


I don't want to become a shill for the program, but it has great and simple file management capabilities. Here's an iPad screen shot - phone has the same thing happening.

Voice-Record-Pro-3.jpg
 
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