Amazon Fire Tablet Video Call

Using the Amazon Burn down as a Video Preparation Tablet

So… I bought an Amazon Fire Tablet. You know, the tablet that's only £50/$50. Why did I do that when I already own an iPad? In hindsight, a good question, but the main motivation for the purchase was two fold.

First of all it'southward dirt cheap. I mean actually, really cheap. The cheapest iPad is over 5 times the price. Secondly, I wanted something small and portable to pack full of video preparation material and the micro SD card slot on the Amazon Fire seemed like a win. With this puppy in my bag, I should exist able to plow many idle minutes into a preparation investment in my film editing career.

I thought I'd throw together a quick review of the Amazon Fire 7″, provide some tips on getting fix up for finer playing video and suggest whether you'd actually want to buy one also.

Amazon Fire 7″ Tablet Review

Purchase on Amazon.com | Buy on Amazon.co.uk

The first thing you lot detect well-nigh the Amazon Fire seven″ tablet is how small it is. The second thing you notice is how heavy it is for information technology'southward size. As before long as you lot pick it upwardly y'all remember it feels a lot heavier than information technology should and at over 300g. My iPad Air is 437g according to Apple, just also twice the physical size of the Burn down.

Information technology's hard not to compare information technology to the exacting standards of an Apple iPad Air, and that being the only other tablet that I've e'er owned and used on a regular ground a adequately impossible comparison from my betoken of view. In that regard the Fire feels chubby, inelegant and as someone who is so ingrained in the Apple style of doing things, a little bit cumbersome to pilot.

On the plus side information technology'due south compact, has a thoroughly adequate SD screen (IPS display (171 ppi / 1024 x 600), although it is quite reflective in less-than-ideal lighting atmospheric condition. That said, one time you get into watching your video clip you probably won't notice that much. You'll be able to brand the most of the tablet with a Amazon Prime subscription under which y'all'll become access to all their movies, music and books. The free apps under 'Amazon Universe' are too a overnice addition.

The tablet is pretty easy to get set upward, especially if yous're already familiar with the Android world, although figuring out the specifics of watching your 'Personal Videos' on the tablet, took quite a bit of googling, and some trial and error. The screensaver adverts on the lock screen are part and parcel of the (subsidised) cheap price, and you lot can pay a one-off fee to remove them. And then far they are an pocket-size annoyance, but I tin can see that with frequent utilise yous'd want to get rid of them.

Other drawbacks with the Burn include the adequately poor audio from the single mono speaker, although plainly listening on headphones is fine – which is what I'll almost exclusively exist doing as I want to use it out and about. The thick bezel around the screen is also annoying some how, possibly because information technology seems to take upwards so much of the tablet's surface.

A off-white few grumbles, but did I mention it'south one-fifth the toll of an iPad, and not just whatever iPad, the very cheapest iPad! (iPad Mini 2 ($220/£185)

In total I spent £103/$119 (Amazon Fire, Amazon Case, SD cards ten 2) and my communication would be to probably just up the ante and get an iPad mini instead, when considering all the other day-to-day uses of the tablet. Simply the just trick with that, is, that you won't have whatsoever where near the storage capabilities of the Fire. The iPad mini two ships with just 16GB internal storage, where as you'd have 128 external storage plus 8GB internal storage on the Fire.

Therefore I'1000 happy with this tablet every bit a compact, portable media centre I can take with me and have hundreds of hours of video training, music, movies and books at my fingertips, fifty-fifty if I'yard semi-lobotomised without an internet connection. If Apple's storage capabilities increased without their giant marker-ups, that would be an even better solution!

Amazon Burn down Tablet Accessories

To make the virtually of my Amazon Fire 7″ tablet I also bought:

An official Amazon Fire 7″ protective instance, which at a whopping £twenty/$25 is half the price of the tablet! But I figured; in for a penny in for a pound. The instance itself is pretty sturdy and allows you to fairly easily prop it up in both portrait and mural modes. It doesn't announced to have the 'machine-off' functionality that my iPad does when you close the case. I also prefer the flexibility of my Roocase Origami iPad case, but thus far, they oasis't made 1 for the Fire.

Buy on Amazon.com | Purchase on Amazon.co.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland

64GB Evo Class 10 Micro SDXC Storage

Foolishly I ended upwards buying two of these cards, when I should have doubled downward on the 128GB, and not had the hassle of swapping them. But I originally simply intended to buy 1, and then figured 64GB wasn't going to be enough space.

To become fast video playback, or any other reliable data transfer speeds, you lot'll want to brand sure yous take at least a 'form ten' bill of fare. So far these Samsung'south have worked beautifully, with excellent video playback regardless of what kind of file I was accessing.

Buy on Amazon.com | Purchase on Amazon.co.uk

UPDATE 2016: Matte Screen Protector

Having used the tablet out and about quite a bit, the well-nigh frustrating problem was the massively reflective screen. When trying to picket tutorials on public transport almost of what I could run across was my face reflected back at me, and I'd have to be constantly scooching around trying to get the angles merely right betwixt me, the dominicus and the screen.

Thanks to this excellent matte screen protector from Tech Gear (in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland) all those woes are behind me. The matte screen works beautifully and doesn't really hamper the quality of the image in whatsoever meaning way. Plus it was pretty cheap at £3.49 with free commitment.

I would say that applying the screen protector is pretty catchy and you'll want to take your time over it. Essentially follow the instructions on the back of the pack, but you'll desire to be very careful when peeling the second part of the applicator plastic abroad from the just-applied screen.

Basically there is adhesive on both sides of the matte screen, i side sticks to the tablet, and the other side is stuck to the thicker applicator plastic that is the vehicle for the entire affair. Merely the (temporary) adhesive to the applicator plastic is quite potent, and so when you try to lift information technology away, it frequently lifts upwards the just-applied matte screen protector besides, introducing bubbles. The hugger-mugger is to peel up an border of the 2d part, before applying the start role, then that when you lot come to skin the second part away, you lot'll got an  This will make much more sense when you do information technology yourself!

Either way, after a few false starts, the now tablet looks and functions really well.

Buy on Amazon.com | Buy on Amazon.co.uk

Setting up an Amazon Fire Tablet for Video

In order to plough your Amazon Fire tablet into a portable personal video training library you lot'll need to do a couple of things.

1. Purchase a micro SD card similar the Samsung 64GB mentioned above, and popular in into the Fire tablet.
2. Download the free Android USB transfer app.
3. Rename the series of video files to take the same titles, with sequent numbering. I used Renamer and it worked a treat.
4. Download VLC for Android from the app store.

Past doing these things y'all will be able to store 64GB of video files on your SD card and use VLC to watch them in ordered playlists. The actual process of doing this is fairly elementary, but non necessarily intuitive.

For example, there is no way (as far as I know) to create video playlists in VLC on the tablet, nor to transfer previous VLC desktop playlists to the tablet. Just, past renaming the files to accept the aforementioned file names, with sequent numbering, VLC on the Fire automatically creates a playlist for you. In the screenshot to a higher place yous tin can see that I've downloaded the Managing director Series: David Fincher videos from Vimeo to picket offline.

I'd besides recommend getting the Eastward S File Explorer app, as a better mode of finding your manner around your other files.

UPDATE 2016: VLC Crashes with too many files

Having loaded upwardly my 64 GB cards with a lot of videos (hundreds of videos?) VLC started to crash and/or to just not recognise that there were any files on the cards.

I retrieve there must be some maximum file limit that information technology tin can work with on the Android App version. Whatever the reason, my work around is to open up navigate to the files in the ES File Explorer app (which does discover them, and doesn't crash) and so set the default video player to VLC.

The really abrasive part well-nigh all this is that I was relying on VLC for the playlist office, which means I at present have to observe and play each 1 individually.

Hither are some quick links to other articles that I found useful as I worked things out, they might help you as well! For a pretty decent review of the Amazon Fire check out this postal service on Forbes.

10 Near Know Tips for Amazon Burn HDX

Taking a screenshot on Amazon Burn Devices

Kindle Tips and Tricks

5 Kindle Tablet Tricks

Source: https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-video-editing-tools-for-editors/setting-up-an-amazon-fire-tablet-for-video/

Share this post