how to
How to Watch Your Own Video on Kindle Fire
If you own a Kindle Fire, then you know it’s really easy to watch video you rented or purchased from Amazon using the video tab on the home page. But how do you watch your own videos?
Maybe you made a great MP4 video of your family vacation or kid’s soccer game you want to watch or show off to family. It is possible to watch these videos on the Kindle Fire, but to make this work you will need a few things.
What You Need
First, get a micro-USB cable (the one on the left below). Amazon should have included one in the box, but they didn’t. You can buy them inexpensively online.
You also need videos in the right format. If you can play it on your phone, you can likely play it on your Kindle Fire. I prefer the MP4 format, which works great. If your videos come in a different format, you will need a good conversion program. I like Handbrake, which converts most popular video formats to MP4 easily. It has versions for Windows and Mac.
How to Load Videos on the Fire
Connect your Kindle Fire to the computer using your micro-USB cable. It will go into a special mode that doesn’t let you use the Fire until you tap the Disconnect button.
You will see the Fire in Mac OS X Finder or Windows Explorer as a storage device.
Drag the video from your computer to the Videos folder on your Fire.
How to Watch the Video on the Fire
Instead of using the Videos tab, which gives you access to Amazon Video files, tap on the Apps tab. Look for the Gallery app and you will find your video in there.
Things to Remember
The Kindle Fire only stores 6GB of personal content. It comes with 8GB, but uses 2GB for the OS and apps. One movie can take up a GB of space or more depending on the length and quality. If you’re encoding video to use only on the Fire, you can lower the video quality a bit since the screen on the Fire only supports 1024 x 600 pixels. Definitely don’t convert your movies to 1080p. 720p will look great but, if you don’t mind, go a little lower.
Also, remember that videos you purchased from another store, like iTunes, won’t work. Apple puts DRM on the files which make them only compatible with iTunes or iOS devices. You can remove the DRM, but that’s illegal and we don’t recommend it.
USB Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Remix of images by Masamic and Hohum
Poker_Faceee
03/31/2012 at 1:57 am
Thanks for the tips! I used to think that the iPad was better than the Kindle Fire. But I realised I was wrong after visiting a site. This site has helped me loads and it is the reason why I currently own a Kindle Fire and not an iPad. The site is : https://treyhall.tk
limusw
01/20/2014 at 10:37 am
If you have a Kindle device, you can borrow from the Kindle Library for free the fun-to-read EBook “Top Five Drugs in Hip-Hop”. Just click this link and enjoy!
https://www.amazon.com/The-Top-Drugs-Hip-Hop-ebook/dp/B008PKAQ7E
Kate
11/15/2013 at 4:18 pm
I was using Toast Titanium 11 to convert my video file and I chose MPEG-4 and it came out as .m4v not .mp4 and my kindle fire says it can’t read it. I’m not really good with computers and stuff so I was curious why this is happening.
limusw
01/20/2014 at 10:38 am
If you have a Kindle device, you can borrow from the Kindle Library for free the fun-to-read EBook “Top Five Drugs in Hip-Hop”. Just click this link and enjoy!
https://www.amazon.com/The-Top-Drugs-Hip-Hop-ebook/dp/B008PKAQ7E
limusw
01/20/2014 at 10:39 am
If you have a Kindle device, you can borrow from the Kindle Library for free the fun-to-read EBook “Top Five Drugs in Hip-Hop”. Just click this link and enjoy!
https://www.amazon.com/The-Top-Drugs-Hip-Hop-ebook/dp/B008PKAQ7E