HD to iPad

[Ann]

Does anyone know how to get HD content from get_iplayer into a format
which an iPad3 will accept?  Currently HD downloads are accepted by
iTunes (and playable with VLC etc) but then rejected on sync to the
device, as being unplayable.

I saw that one person (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2010636) had
been exploring this in 2009 but I can't find a solution posted anywhere.
 My temporary workaround is to reencode the file with Handbrake, but
this is wasteful and slow (and discards the nice MP4 tags which
get_iplayer adds).

Thanks.