Record iPad / iPhone Screen Without Jailbreak using Reflection

There is no native way of recording your iPad or iPhone screen. I can understand why Apple haven't put this feature onto their devices, as it opens up all sorts of opportunities for copyright abuse, but nevertheless, it can be useful to do.

I've been looking around for a while trying to figure out how I might do this and I came across an OSX application called Reflection.

Go to the Reflection website (http://reflectionapp.com) and download the DMG file to your Mac.

Once installed, you can then use the Airplay function on your iPad or iPod and you can now view your screen and the audio on your Mac.

Pretty cool.

You can try it for free for 10 minutes of Airplay time, and once you are happy it does what it says on the tin, you can pay a very reasonable $14.99 for a single license or $49.99 for 5 licenses.

A word of warning is that you will need a fast internal network. My 2.4GHz wireless produced less than impressive results. Once I switched to my 5GHz network, everything was fine.

I've made a video tutorial which you can get to via my YouTube channel or by clicking below:

Any questions, please fee free to leave a comment and I'll try and come back to you.

How to Download iTunes Movie and TV Show Artwork Free

Want an easy way to get those high quality iTunes art for Movies and TV Shows? Its free, easy, and doesn't require downloading software or going to any websites except iTunes itself.

And the artwork will be displayed on your iPhone, iPad, iPod etc just like any other.

I blogged before on how to rip your DVD and Blu Rays to iTunes in previous posts:

Ripping your DVDs and Blu Rays for your Apple Mac / iPod / iPhone / iPad etc

Ripping your DVDs and Blu Rays pt.2: Extract Subtitles for M4V / MP4 / iTunes

HD-SD Tag: Having HD and SD movies in iTunes

But say you've got that far, and now want the iTunes artwork. Follow this simple guide:

(1) Find the movie in iTunes

I've used the marvellous Liam Neeson movie "Taken" as my example here:

(2) Right click on the artwork and click "Copy Link"

(3) Open up your browser of choice and paste the link and go to the web address

(4) Now find the link to the picture and navigate to it

In Google Chrome: Right click the picture and select "Open Image in New Tab"

In Safari: Right click the picture and select "Open Image in New Tab

In Firefox: Right click the picture and select "View Image"

(5) Edit the hyperlink address

In the address box of your web browser, you will see the image URL - looking something like this:

Now select everything in the address that is numeric before the .jpg extension:

Delete it, and delete any superfluous dots left behind - so in my example above I would have ended up with two dots because I didn't get my selection and delete quite right. I just want "dj.tciejzpb.jpg" as the filename.

Go to the URL (usually this can be done by hitting <Enter> on your keyboard)

(6) Copy and paste the picture into iTunes

You will now see the large iTunes artwork displayed on the web page. Simply copy and paste it into the iTunes entry for your movie:

You can do this by saving the image somewhere, then going into iTunes, right clicking the movie and selecting "Get Info" then the menu item "Artwork" and clicking on "Add..." and selecting the image you just saved.

That's it! Really simple.

I have on the odd occasion had some movies that don't work. It is usually during the Step 5, where I have the correct URL for the large picture but it just doesn't display anything or gives an error. It's happened once or twice. I usually go away for a bit and try again, and it works. It could be my browser, or some other reason, but it does work eventually...

So no need for extra software, or going to a database website - just go straight to the source!

Music - a word of caution

For some strange reason, this method doesn't work for Music. It does work for Movies and TV Shows. It's odd why it doesn't work, it just gives an error. It must be iTunes codes that artwork in some different way.

And finally...

It won't work if the movie isn't in iTunes (obviously). If that is the case, then Google images are your friend, or if you use Subler, that has a good array of artwork (Go to File / Import... / Search metadata online... then sort out the meta data and the next screen gives you a choice of artwork).

Please let me know if this is helpful by leaving a comment, or post a question and I'll try and answer it.

Google Chrome on iOS

What a great day today is. A momentous day. One I shall long remember... OK, perhaps that is a bit over the top, but I am very excited that whilst surfing the iTunes Store for the Blogger app (being used right now to type this on!) I came across Chrome that became available a few days ago.

So what's it like? Magic.

If you like Chrome on your desktop you will never go back to rotten old Safari again.

You get a similar look and feel to the desktop version. There's the tabs, the type in address box to search and the ability to sync your bookmarks and open tabs between your different Chrome sessions on different devices.

In addition there are some cool bits. First is the ability to swipe between tabs. When you do it, you wonder why nobody has thought of this before in the Safari team. Then there is the speak to search. Siri eat your heart put, understood me every time so far. Then there is the menu on the side that gives you the option to go Incognito ( like on the desktop where cookies aren't tracked) and the option to force the site to load the desktop version if the mobile one is too restrictive.

Both iPad and iPhone versions work well.

Sure, it's just a web browser. But for me it is the benchmark browser and thankfully it is now on iOS