Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - Tips on Use For Video Professionals

[Andy Wilkinson]

Not sure which is the best forum area for this but this seems like the right one so here goes.

I recently bought a Galaxy Tab 10.1 WiFi as yet another potential means of showing my corporate clients and potential clients examples of my work, Rough Cuts of work in progress etc. when I'm out and about.

GALAXY Tab 10.1- Samsung Mobile

I use mainly Apple Mac Pros and CS 5.5 Production Premium workflow now (with some legacy projects still in FCS2) but I also use Windows 7 Core i7 Box with Vegas Pro for some projects/rendering tasks.

You would have thought an iPad would have been the obvious choice. Main reason I bought a Galaxy Tab over an iPad was Flash support when website browsing, freedom from the closed Apple iTune centric ecosystem, ability to display 1280x720p video (in a variety of formats, WMV HD, MP4 etc.) natively and the 16x10 screen which is more HD video suitable. I have an iPod Touch (Gen 4, with the retina display) which is excellent, just at times way too small for client interaction work.

I know there are rumours that the next iPad will be a HD display - but my guess it'll still be the 4x3 screen aspect ratio, not the more widescreen friendly 16x10 which allows a much nicer display of 16x9 with control bar below that (i.e. without huge black bars top and bottom!)

Here's what I've learnt so far specifically about the Galaxy Tab 10.1 that might be of interest/useful to people like us who's business is video production. For those of you who also have one (or one of its many variants), please add any useful information about it's performance or tips on optimising video for use on the device.

1. Flash support is there but a bit spotty. Even with a fast broadband connection such as I have, YouTube videos will play in 720p with occasional stuttering, and really struggle to play at all in 1080p. Hey, but at least its there and works acceptably (rather than perfectly) most of the time! I know Flash will eventually go away - but that's several years away I think.

2. BBC iPlayer works OK until you go full screen - some occasional visual artifacts ruin that experience.

3. My Vimeo videos do not work - apparently if you are a Plus member they will be encoded for mobile (but will not play in HD). Seems Vimeo has a lot of catch-up to do for Android devices. YouTube works fine up to 720p as mentioned above.

4. Mounting it on my Mac Pro did not work at all. Mounting it as an external drive on my Windows 7 Core i7 box needed the download of a driver from Samsung first (link below) - and then works great!

Samsung

5. The screen on this thing is stunning, very responsive and easy to use. Colours are way off (blues much too bright for example). Really good wide angle of view too!

6. WiFi performance is excellent. It'll pick up a strong signal in areas where all my other WiFi devices struggle.

7. Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) is still a bit rough round the edges - no way as slick as iOS on my iPod Touch Gen 4. Ice Cream Sandwich (i.e. Google Android 4) is coming to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 "soon". Let's hope it's more polished.

8. I really like how you can lock the screen with the power button (toggle the lock on or off with 1 press each time). Great for when you just want to hand the tablet to someone to view a video. I also like the Bookmark feature for allowing quick access to specific sections of the video.

9. I'm still working on optimising renders of 1280x720p HD videos to play really well on the Tab. Generally, I've been pretty pleased with performance so far but I do notice the occasional stutter. With some formats it will offer to convert to MP4 as you transfer the file over - works OK but I'd rather be in total control of the conversion!

10. Battery life is excellent.

11. The ability to use Polaris Office (comes free on the Tab) to create Word and Excel compatible documents out on the road then get them on my Windows 7 box as easily as copy and paste via USB link is great. I think the Tab is much more Windows friendly than Mac friendly - good job I have both systems in my editing suite!

12. Sound from the speakers either side is just about adequate - pretty tinny but no worse than you'd expect from a portable device. If you want much better sound get a Blackberry Playbook (but that has other weaknesses...)

I'm still learning the ins and outs of this thing so hope to add more useful info in the weeks ahead.

For those of you who also have the Galaxy Tab, please feel free to comment and add other information that might be useful to video professionals like us.