Running videos in the background on an iPhone

January 12th, 2009 by Hang

I’m too ADD to listen to audio lectures on my desktop but I’ve found it works when I have it running in the background on my iPhone while I’m playing games. One major annoyance was that I wasn’t able to listen to video lectures (such as TED talks) and do anything else at the same time on the iPhone.

It turns out there is a way to do it although it’s pretty obscure. First upload a 10 second silent audio clip onto your iPhone. Then, go into playlists and create an on-the-go playlist. Add the 10 second audio clip first and then any video clips you would like to watch. Start the playlist and then exit the iPod application before the audio ends. When the video starts up, it’ll be running in the background.

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| Comments (7)

  • http://www.meme-hazard.org/ Trond Nilsen

    I use a little piece of software called WinFF for this – you just queue up a bunch of video files in it, and it rapidly spits out a bunch of MP3s. Since it tends to take me a while to get from downloading something to looking at it, I tend to do them in batches, which makes it nice and practical..

    I’ve never been good at listening to things during game playing, though – though I guess it depends on the type of game I’m playing..

  • http://www.meme-hazard.org Trond Nilsen

    I use a little piece of software called WinFF for this – you just queue up a bunch of video files in it, and it rapidly spits out a bunch of MP3s. Since it tends to take me a while to get from downloading something to looking at it, I tend to do them in batches, which makes it nice and practical..

    I’ve never been good at listening to things during game playing, though – though I guess it depends on the type of game I’m playing..

  • http://www.bumblebeelabs.com/ Hang

    I used to do this using something like mediacoder but for me, the lag was often a month or two and it became too annoying to deal with. If you only want to listen to the audio without doing anything else on the iPhone, do this:

    Start the video playing
    Press the power button
    Press it again
    Hit the home button twice
    click play
    Press the power button again

    This way, you can get the video playing with the screen off.

  • http://www.bumblebeelabs.com Hang

    I used to do this using something like mediacoder but for me, the lag was often a month or two and it became too annoying to deal with. If you only want to listen to the audio without doing anything else on the iPhone, do this:

    Start the video playing
    Press the power button
    Press it again
    Hit the home button twice
    click play
    Press the power button again

    This way, you can get the video playing with the screen off.

  • Sean Corbin

    Great info…thanks for the post. Came across a site which had some pretty cool wallpapers.

    http://www.iphonewallpaperbabes.com

  • Hang

    An easier way to get video playing in the background:

    Start the video
    Hit the home button
    Hit the power button
    Hit the home button
    Double tap the home button
    Hit Play
    Slide the slider

  • Hang

    An easier way to get video playing in the background:

    Start the video
    Hit the home button
    Hit the power button
    Hit the home button
    Double tap the home button
    Hit Play
    Slide the slider