In your case (if I'm guessing correctly), it's probably better to keep using the provided Music and Video apps. This is because (if I'm guessing correctly), you get your music from something resembling the iTunes store or a subscription.
If that's not the case, read on.
My case, and that of others I know, is where one has music that was purchased in the heydays of vinyl and later CD's, long before the "iTunes Store" was even a glimmer in Jobs' beady eye. And that music has been converted to digtital if necessary and is stored as files on HDD's or external media. How do you play these files on the iPhone/iPad? Can you do it with the Music app?
Moreover, how do you play video files that you have had since before iOS existed, or that you acquire outside of the iTunes store?
The solutions I refer to are not "hidden knowledge" as you suggest. But they assume familiarity with basic networking and networking protocols.
First, you will need to connect another computer not running iOS to your local network (e.g., plug it into you home router). Being HN, it is assumed you know how to configure and run "servers" (programs that serve files to a network) and that you use an OS that lets you do so, easily. Several such OS's are freely available.
Then, if you simply "serve" the audio and video files from the non-iOS HDD or external media drive to the iOS device via your local network, you can use a free app from the "App Store" (or you can just use Safari) that can behave as a client on the iOS device. Using the right apps, you can either 1. download files to the iPhone/iPad then play them, or 2. play them directly from the non-iOS HDD/media drive ("streaming"?).
I have used HTTP, FTP, SFTP, WebDav clients successfully. But there are probably others that could work.
Some apps also give you server capabilities, so you can download files from the iPhone/iPad to your non-iOS computers.
Any serious work with audio or video (e.g. transcoding) can be done on the non-iOS computer _before_ serving it to the iOS devices. For example, do conversion to MP4 (the format Safari likes) on the non-iOS computer.
Here's a few apps you might use (assuming you understand the protocols above):
AirDrive
Documents
OPlayerLite
If you have some specific issues you cannot solve, I'd be happy to try to help you. But you'll need to give details of what you're trying to do. If you just say "VLC on iOS is a PITA", then I'm afraid there's not much I can do except to say "I agree." Whereas if you say, "How do I ________?", then maybe I can suggest a possible solution.
Regarding these apps, you asked "What benefit do I get from them?"
It depends.
If you "rent" your audio and video from Apple, then they offer little to no benefit.
But if you _own_ audio and video files, e.g., from the pre-iOS era, and you want to play them on iOS devices, then the answer is "They let you transfer and play files." Quite useful, indeed.
So for myself only, and that is all my post will explain, I've ripped every cd i ever had (never had vinyl so not an issue) into ALAC and FLAC files (did both cause why not).
Then I just let itunes deal with keeping them up to date. I also generally purchase music from itunes or amazon and just dump it into itunes in general for syncing. Itunes radio is also passable for discovering new songs so streaming works ok.
For video, to be honest I have 2 that I have on my phone right now. One is the original star trek remake movie as I wanted to see what an itunes movie was like. The rest are just a bunch of ripped via handbrake dvd files on my nas server.
As to vlc being a pita to setup for streaming, my annoyance with it is in regards to setting up ftp, or http to get it to stream video files that I honestly can't be bothered to convert just so that I can play them on my iphone. I managed to get things working but the amount of effort was quite ludicrous to the point that i'd rather just use ffmpeg and convert the file manually then dump it into itunes to sync it. VLC on ios is not very useful.
My main issue with vlc is that it can't mount the existing afp (or nfs for that matter) share that my fileserver has for all my video files. And setting up transcoding to mp4 just made me realize that there are better uses of my time than dealing with such piddly issues. I'd rather be learning rust for example than dealing with streaming/transcoding issues to my phone.
I'll look at the three apps you mentioned, but overall the music app in particular works for my use cases. The video app is also, ok enough for me not to hate it. But I generally just download some videos and then dump them onto my phone for playback when in a line and then immediately delete them. I'm a pretty basic user in that regard.
I forgot to mention a point that's probably significant. I cannot use iTunes. The OS's I've used do not support it. (I do have a Mac desktop but I never used it for connecting to the internet and never ran iTunes on it.)
My exploration of iTunes alternatives started back when it first appeared with the iPod. I used some Windows and UNIX programs that could work with the iTunes database for a while but of course Apple kept changing the database format; and the idea of "renting" music started to catch on with the unwashed masses: iTunes became accepted as a way to manage one's music collection. I just gave up on the idea of iTunes syncing.
I simply do not need it. I forget it even exists. I use HTTP and FTP to access my collection and it works well enough.
If I had been using iTunes all these years, and was satisfied with how it works, I doubt I would switch away. I know most people must fall into that category. I have just forgotten how I have avoided iTunes all these years. I have never used it, even once!
As for VLC, I agree with your approach. I too tried to get VLC working; and I think it's great they are trying to get it to run on iOS, but it's just easier to use ffmpeg. VLC uses the ffmpeg libraries, but not vice versa. Go figure.
I've never really understood the appeal of "streaming" (progressive download seems a better solution if one lacks the storage space) and I'm more an MPlayer guy than a VLC guy anyway.
The Documents app has both SFTP and FTP clients so you should be able to access and sync with your fileserver if you run the sftp subsystem or an ftpd on it. It has WebDav too. You can use a web browser to transfer upload/download files if all else fails.
Ah, yeah not being able to use itunes would explain things better. Also I should also note that I only really run osx, so itunes for myself is mostly a "does what it says on the tin" situation. I know windows users have other experiences. As for renting of stuff, honestly with my appletv renting movies is really my favorite way to enjoy movies. I rarely ever watch a movie twice so it works nicely. I don't think you can rent music though, least i've never seen any music under the rental situation.
As for the streaming I was trying to setup the "live http streaming" stuff that apple sometimes uses for keynote streams. Basically a m3u playlist that updates with a bunch of chunked mp4 files. But after an hour of no real progress I decided to abandon the idea.
If the documents app can use sftp thats way better. I have a huge aversion towards ftp in general and would rather not have it running on my fileserver. Webdav would be useful as well.
As for rust, its really cool and I'm tempted to go whole hog on using it instead of go for some of my rewrites. The trait system is really fun and honestly the whole community is refreshingly fun. Which could just be related to its size and newness but either way its a fun design.
I use the word "rent" in a general sense; I could have just as well used the word "licence".
I'm used to the old days when you bought music and it did not come with terms attached. But times are changing as more people forget about the rights they used to have, not to mention future generations who may never know what it is like to "buy" music with no strings attached. See http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/uk/terms...
Note the headings like USAGE TERMS and words like "nontransferable"; this is not your usual "purchase". Imagine seeing those terms on the packaging of a CD.
The reason you see these terms is that you are not "buying" music - you are licensing, or "renting" it. When you "buy" something, normally the seller does tell you how you may or may not use it and require you to enter into a private agreement governing the usage of what you just bought (regardless of the legality of such usage). "Licensing" or "renting" is a different matter, however - you must agree to terms.
A few years ago a story made headlines where a certain celebrity in the US wanted to tranfser his enormous iTunes music collection to his kids, but his lawyers advised him he might not be able to do that given Apple's license terms. He responded by announcing to a journalist that he was considering suing Apple.
As a consumer, I'm not a fan of the idea of restricting content to a particular device or set of devices. I prefer my files (including music files) to be portable. I have choice and I'm not married to Apple by any means.
> And setting up transcoding to mp4 just made me realize that there are better uses of my time than dealing with such piddly issues. I'd rather be learning rust for example than dealing with streaming/transcoding issues to my phone.
AFAIK that's not an issue? I have VLC on two iOS devices and you open the app, turn on the internal server, go to your web browser and drag/drop files in to it. VLC on iOS plays every format the desktop application plays.
My goal was to setup streaming so I could stream to my ipad or iphone when on my network. Having to drag/drop each file hits the same barrier as "I can just write a shell/ruby/perl/python script to run this through ffmpeg and add it to itunes and kick of a sync instead".
But that means applescript which also means I probably won't bother dealing with it. :)
What I was trying to setup was convert a video to mp4 transcoding and the live streaming server stuff that chunks the file for "streaming" aka, 10 sec section here/there.
My ipad only has 16g so streaming was my primary goal.
My case, and that of others I know, is where one has music that was purchased in the heydays of vinyl and later CD's, long before the "iTunes Store" was even a glimmer in Jobs' beady eye. And that music has been converted to digtital if necessary and is stored as files on HDD's or external media. How do you play these files on the iPhone/iPad? Can you do it with the Music app?
Moreover, how do you play video files that you have had since before iOS existed, or that you acquire outside of the iTunes store?
The solutions I refer to are not "hidden knowledge" as you suggest. But they assume familiarity with basic networking and networking protocols.
First, you will need to connect another computer not running iOS to your local network (e.g., plug it into you home router). Being HN, it is assumed you know how to configure and run "servers" (programs that serve files to a network) and that you use an OS that lets you do so, easily. Several such OS's are freely available.
Then, if you simply "serve" the audio and video files from the non-iOS HDD or external media drive to the iOS device via your local network, you can use a free app from the "App Store" (or you can just use Safari) that can behave as a client on the iOS device. Using the right apps, you can either 1. download files to the iPhone/iPad then play them, or 2. play them directly from the non-iOS HDD/media drive ("streaming"?).
I have used HTTP, FTP, SFTP, WebDav clients successfully. But there are probably others that could work.
Some apps also give you server capabilities, so you can download files from the iPhone/iPad to your non-iOS computers.
Any serious work with audio or video (e.g. transcoding) can be done on the non-iOS computer _before_ serving it to the iOS devices. For example, do conversion to MP4 (the format Safari likes) on the non-iOS computer.
Here's a few apps you might use (assuming you understand the protocols above):
AirDrive Documents OPlayerLite
If you have some specific issues you cannot solve, I'd be happy to try to help you. But you'll need to give details of what you're trying to do. If you just say "VLC on iOS is a PITA", then I'm afraid there's not much I can do except to say "I agree." Whereas if you say, "How do I ________?", then maybe I can suggest a possible solution.
Regarding these apps, you asked "What benefit do I get from them?"
It depends.
If you "rent" your audio and video from Apple, then they offer little to no benefit.
But if you _own_ audio and video files, e.g., from the pre-iOS era, and you want to play them on iOS devices, then the answer is "They let you transfer and play files." Quite useful, indeed.