According to Apple’s iPad tech specs, the iPad does indeed support a type of AVI video: Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

AVI, the audio-video interleave is a container introduced by Microsoft. Motion JPEG is a type of AVI compression. While AVI in general is ubiquitous for standard definition video content on the internet, there’s no indication Apple is supporting the specific XviD/Divx codec (encoding/decoding) used by those AVI files.

iPad compatible and not compatible AVI files

Some Mac users might not that knowledgeable about video file formats. In other words, iPad supports some types of video cameras watch their AVI footage via the camera card reader accessory, it won’t let you watch downloaded AVI movies on the iPad.

Easy solution for AVI files playback on iPad

If you want to download AVI movies from the internet and play on you iPad, you can convert your AVI files to iPad friendly format. AVI files with JPEG compression is high quality, but it’s HUGE. So you can also convert avi to MP4 format for iPad.

It’s a hassle to get all the way to the end only to discover that your video file won’t play on your iPad. I recommend iSkysoft iPad Video Converter for Mac, which provide optimized presets for your iPad so you don’t need to worry about the settings for your iPad.

Download it for free here:

Download Intel Version

1. Add AVI files to iPad Video Converter for Mac

2. Select iPad preset from format list

3. Hit convert to start video to iPad conversion on OS X