Streaming Video to iPhone 101

[riddlemd]

I've found a way to stream video from my home PC to my iphone from anywhere.
It requires the use of a web server and some php script (which I am currently working on for you guys.) It should be good to go in a little while.

Just to note, it will work over edge (With out video quality loss, damn youtube) -- but will be ungodly slow.

[riddlemd]

K things are going swimmingly, had a few bottlenecks... apparently all the movies I ripped from dvd to h264 are to high a level to be played back on the iPhone so I have to re-encode all of them... UGGG! (least they still work on 360, right?...)

Hopefully will have a nice working script for you guys soon -- on a side note, does any one even give a crap? lol.

[Yankee]

Even though I don't have an iPhone yet, and probably won't get one for a few months, I am interested in this.

[bigshot]

I use the Elgato Turbo.264. Will it be fast enough to work with the standard iPod Video quality that it outputs? I can send you a sample movie to test with if you would like.

See ya
Steve

[McNeuman]

I'm very interested in this! When you say it will be slow, do you mean it will spend a lot of time "buffering" before the video starts playing, or something else?

[riddlemd]

I'm very interested in this! When you say it will be slow, do you mean it will spend a lot of time "buffering" before the video starts playing, or something else?

Not really sure, for some reason EDGE will not let me connect to my local network anymore -- was working fine up untill about 8pm yesterday and now I just can't connect to it via EDGE (so I can't test edge speeds.)


I use the Elgato Turbo.264. Will it be fast enough to work with the standard iPod Video quality that it outputs? I can send you a sample movie to test with if you would like.

See ya
Steve


I have samples to use, thanks though -- Was just having weird problems until I figured out that was the issue. My backups are encoded at Level 4.1 (which 360 can use) instead of 3 (which the iphone can use).

Any one have experience with apache? I'm currently using OmniHTTPD as my test server -- but I really don't want to roll out a "program" using it...

[riddlemd]

Here is a preview of what I have...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-UoLsSSw30

[liquidsg]

can you elaborate more on what sort of process this uses to stream video? i thought it was impossible to access the phones video player from the web?

[riddlemd]

Lol well.. it's not ;) visit http://www.apple.com/iphone/ipod/ on an iphone and you can get an idea of how I figured out how to do it.

[zerock]

use Visual Hub beta to make the videos it has a iPhone option.

[riddlemd]

I use handbreak to rip mp4's from dvd and videora Xbox 360 converter for just converting from any other format to mp4 -- I've found both to work very well and give me the best quality/size ratio.

My rips stay in native size (Because I watch them on my tv/360) my iphone just pulls those and resizes them on the fly... not the best on my bandwidth, but that is how I personally prefer it.

[liquidsg]

Lol well.. it's not ;) visit http://www.apple.com/iphone/ipod/ on an iphone and you can get an idea of how I figured out how to do it.

ahhh i see! very nice. I would love to see what you have cooked up to allow for streaming!

[riddlemd]

You guys have any suggestions for features? PS rate/coment me on youtube and digg if you can get a chance -- I need as many peoples feedback as I can get.

(http://digg.com/apple/Streaming_video_to_iPhone)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-UoLsSSw30)

[GuitarRocker]

So, I do not own an iPhone, but if this turns out good I may sell my iPod to buy a phone. What is an acceptable upload speed and does it work good over edge?

[riddlemd]

I've tested it on 802.11b (which is like 11mb) works perfectly...

As I've said a few times -- for some reason I can not connect to my home server over the EDGE network, so I can not test how well it will work over EDGE. Hopefully I can figure out why it is not connecting and will be able to let you guys know. I'm guessing here, but being that the average speed of EDGE I'm getting where I am is 128kbs I'm going to say it might be rough to stream 1024kbs mp4 videos, but we will see. Songs should stream petty well over EDGE I would think though, will be adding audio support soon.

[riddlemd]

Freaking great... Apple has disabled all play list format support on the iphone... nothing works... m3u, qtl, plt, nothing!!! arg... going to have to figure out a way to make my own play list system...

[Pikemann_Urge]

I admit that I haven't properly understood what you're doing but I'm guessing you could just have any HTML page with linked thumbnails to compatible video files, and you would just click/select the link and get the video to play... right?

I mean, if I had to do it, I wouldn't use scripts because, well, I don't know how! :D So that above idea could work I think. It would work for a LAN as well with even less trouble.

[speedemonV12]

Im not sure if this will help you or not. but there is an app called mytunesrss, it allows you to host your itunes on your network, creating a server on your computer. Since apple added the rss application to the iphone's safari, maybe you could take a look and see if you can gather anything from the app...

http://www.codewave.de/products/mytunesrss/

check it out.
if this doesnt help you, i still hope that you can figure this out. It would be amazing. It would mean i wouldnt have to constantly change out movies and music, cause its only got 7.3 gb of memory. Keep up the good work. I am usually at places that have wi-fi, so im good for whatever you got!

[liquidsg]

when are you gonna hook us up with the script?! ;)

[riddlemd]

hopefully be avalible before or on the 4th, I have the day off then and will be working on it all day.

[Chap]

Perhaps running orb on a home computer might also work? I haven't done orb in a while.

[liquidsg]

i doubt the whole orb idea...orb streams with wmvs or asf or some similar file that wont work on the iphone if i am correct.

riddlemd, are the files that you stream hosted online or have you figured out how to access them locally?

[Chap]

http://forums.orb.com/viewtopic.php?p=25517&sid=f339e93fdaf17cffbfbd08d33836d612

Looks like the orb guys are trying different things, but its a no go.

[riddlemd]

I don't have an acount there but tell them that mp4 level3.1 should stream fine.

My way works pretty flawlessly,though just finishing up a few features and the GUI.

[jeremyttu]

I installed Apache, just for fun... and tried to directly access a mp4 file I had in the root. Didn't work... but it appeared that the iPhone had no clue what to do with it. I came up with this answer...

MIME-TYPE :)

I think that is all that you have to send is the correct mime-type and you are good to go. I edited the mime-types.conf file and added the line:

video/mp4 mp4

Restarted Apache... and all of a sudden, I was streaming mp4 to my iPhone. You can do that in IIS also, its under the website configuration.

For now, until someone writes a fancy script, just turn directory browsing on. You could probably fix up the mp3 mime-type and then point a virtual directory at your iTunes Music folder and then stream all your music.

Hope this helps...

Jeremy

[riddlemd]

Good job! My system is designed for people with a bit less tech knowlage. Script should be avalible tomorrow.

[webjock]

i have a solution for this on my blog:

http://gadgetcaptain.blogspot.com

you can stream video,mp3s view pdf, word docs and excel files.

it uses a php script and all you need to do is modify the pref file.

[NeuronBasher]

Any tips on encoding/transcoding for streaming to the iPhone? I've tried a variety of h.264/mp4/aac combinations and I haven't had any luck yet. I can produce files that can be played on the iPhone when they're uploaded to it, but not via streaming -- even with the addition of the correct MIME type (and verification that it's being returned).

I would love any feedback from those who have gotten this working.

[webjock]

Any tips on encoding/transcoding for streaming to the iPhone? I've tried a variety of h.264/mp4/aac combinations and I haven't had any luck yet. I can produce files that can be played on the iPhone when they're uploaded to it, but not via streaming -- even with the addition of the correct MIME type (and verification that it's being returned).

I would love any feedback from those who have gotten this working.

i export using quicktime w/ h.264 and aac. It works for me. I just updated my quicktime using the OS X self updater. I've copied and downloaded mp4 files off the internet googling "PSP mp4 movies" They all work.

How are you embedding in the html page?

Read this:
http://gadgetcaptain.blogspot.com/2007/07/iphone-internet-streaming.html

I have the HTML example and a link to a site that has it working on the iphone.

[Pikemann_Urge]

Read this:
http://gadgetcaptain.blogspot.com/2007/07/iphone-internet-streaming.html

I have the HTML example and a link to a site that has it working on the iphone.
That's great news. Thank goodness you don't need scripts etc.

Still dreaming of iPhone... :D

[riddlemd]

This playlist thing is driving me freakin nutts... I've tested playing mp3 over edge and it is not to bad, about 5-8second gap before songs start -- but not horrible.

Why did apple remove quicktimes own (.qtl) playlist support from the freakin phone!?

[Bama Gambler]

Why did apple remove quicktimes own (.qtl) playlist support from the freakin phone!?If you can easily stream your own music and videos (and see playlists), then why would you spend more for a larger iPhone?

[riddlemd]

True... I hate marketing ;) I think I might have found a way to do this using .m3u playlists and ajax. ;)

We'll see...

Release of my web app might be delayed, but it looks like these other guys have told you easy ways of doing what I am doing (though mine will be a little easier, just install it on your pc and it will be good to go.)

[michelleC]

Apple is not doing anything purposeful to prevent streaming, I suspect rstp will be included in an update to support the quicktime streaming server.

Meantime the developers guide apple posted describes how to arrainge your files for simple http-streaming.

For those of us trying to develop streaming solutions I think whats been hurting us is that the web server needs to support

Byte-range support

Apache and most servers do, but many media streamers do not, i don't think tversity or any of the synbas servers do. And my experiments over the last few days with twonkyvision have been hit and miss. someimes the movies play sometimes they don't.

I've been developing a upnp client for mac laptops that acts as a bridge between upnp media servers and platforms that don't support upnp ie. apple but support bonjour discovery.

www.distributed-home.com/wordpress

modifying it to put out the apple formated javascript and accessing content from a twonkyvision server has been hit and miss. I intend to try using elgato eyeconnect and see if that works.

What does work, is simple http-streaming from apache or tomcat webserver, This works good with content generated from simple php scripts, iweb formated pages and the ipress podcast plugin for wordpress.

What this of course doesn't give you is on the fly content generation, if you have a lot of content this is going to be important. I am trying to develop something similar to the utube client. My application does this with pc's and laptops and some media servers but the Iphone is giving me problems. Of course I've only had it a couple days, and a lot of that time was spent watching utube clips.

I'd be interested in hearing about any streaming solutions anyone develops, and even combining development activities. I have a source forge project referenced at the above url.

[michelleC]

If you release a beta , we may be able to help you, A lot of us have web development experience, and the resources to test the application.

[ashmaurya]

For those not inclined or able to run their own webserver, we're going to be adding iPhone support to BoxCloud (http://www.boxcloud.com) in the next week or so. BoxCloud effectively turns any desktop into a web addressable server and you simply drag-n-drop to share files and folders.

[riddlemd]

iExpress 0.1a (http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=172307) Just development name, no idea what I am going to call it -- going to be a whole suite of things when I am done.

!! NOT ANYWHERE NEAR FINISHED !!
1. Put iExpress on your web server.
2. open index.php and configure it to point where your media is at (must be in scope of the web server.)
3. ???
4. PROFIT!

** No need to edit your servers mime settings!

[riddlemd]

For some reason I can not get embedded files to play over EDGE -- direct links work fine... Any one else having this problem?


[edit]
FIXED IT! ;p

[michelleC]

cool, but I go to a page called wikiupload, click on the download link and nothing happens.

[riddlemd]

k let me get a new upload site.

[edit]

try this one

Download iExpress 0.1a (http://www.mediafire.com/?em0efmtutny)

I should have 0.2a done soon -- will have little bit better GUI. Hopefully will have playlist thing figured out within a week or so.

[michelleC]

I'm really excited about this one, after tweaking my java code for the last serveral hours I'm able to get my bridge application to work with the iphone and either the twonkyvision or elagoto eyeconnect media servers. The bridge is a custom server application I wrote for laptops and eyeconnect and twonkyvision are two very popular low cost upnp servers.

My mediabridge is a proxy server that can run anywhere on your network and translates upnp commands into formated web pages, for video and soon for music and playlists. the eyeconnect media server supports itunes playlists. so in theory something might be doable on the Iphone.

I was able to stream an entire converted 2 hour dvd to my 4gb Iphone. It streams progressively and plays flawlessly.

Unfortunately since I have a real job its going to take me at least a week before I post an alpha on my source forge page.

Here's a screenshot from iphoney, does anyone know anyway to get a screen capture from the phone.

http://distributed-home.com/wordpress/?p=40

[riddlemd]

I'm really excited about this one, after tweaking my java code for the last serveral hours I'm able to get my bridge application to work with the iphone and either the twonkyvision or elagoto eyeconnect media servers. The bridge is a custom server application I wrote for laptops and eyeconnect and twonkyvision are two very popular low cost upnp servers.

My mediabridge is a proxy server that can run anywhere on your network and translates upnp commands into formated web pages, for video and soon for music and playlists. the eyeconnect media server supports itunes playlists. so in theory something might be doable on the Iphone.

I was able to stream an entire converted 2 hour dvd to my 4gb Iphone. It streams progressively and plays flawlessly.

Unfortunately since I have a real job its going to take me at least a week before I post an alpha on my source forge page.

Here's a screenshot from iphoney, does anyone know anyway to get a screen capture from the phone.

http://distributed-home.com/wordpress/?p=40

I hear ya on the job thing ;p bills are annoying...

Have you tested it on wifi that is not part of your lan? I've had mixed results -- EDGE works, but is ungodly slow and would not recommend it for anymore then streaming music (which takes a good amount of time per song, takes about 45-60sec to pre-load enough so it does not catch up to the buffering.) EDGE has been pretty spotty around Tulsa too, some places I do just fine but driving around listening to streaming music is almost defiantly not going to be feasible... drops out to often.

[michelleC]

I hear ya on the job thing ;p bills are annoying...

Have you tested it on wifi that is not part of your lan? I've had mixed results -- EDGE works, but is ungodly slow and would not recommend it for anymore then streaming music (which takes a good amount of time per song, takes about 45-60sec to pre-load enough so it does not catch up to the buffering.) EDGE has been pretty spotty around Tulsa too, some places I do just fine but driving around listening to streaming music is almost defiantly not going to be feasible... drops out to often.

hear ya on the job thing ;p bills are annoying
really its not so bad, I do Java programming, and get paid for "playing" with the internet. Some of the stuff I get to play with would make a hacker cry with envy.


This would only be useful on wifi, I doubt edge could handle the bandwidth, and it would probably be in violation of the media server tos agreements.

However, it works great over wifi, In theory you could modify my proxy to work over the internet, the code will be open source under gpl license, and there are open source media servers it will definitely work with.

For internet video, which usually is not 2 hour movies, the better solution is to use some of the commercial podcast software which should work because they use apache/tomcat servers or the wordpress plugin I previously mentioned, or iweb.

However for watching movies over your own lan or possibly (with slight modification) over wifi from your local starbucks my solution will work great.

I'm sure there will be a ton of other solutions now that apple release a developers guide. It was the guide that helped me solve my initial problems.

[speedemonV12]

All of these thing that you guys have been working on sound great, and I hope that they continue to develop. I personally know a thing or two about computers, so getting this to work when you release something a little further along will not be much of a problem for me. But for those who do not know anything about this topic, they just want to use this creation to stream music or vids to their iPhone. Will they be able to use this? Will it be user friendly? I hope it is cause this looks like a great project, and I know a lot of people would loveto use it.

I wrote this from my amazing iPhone btw! I love this thing!

[michelleC]

Very user friendly.

For my bridge for instance. If you look at our home page you will see pictures of the non iphone version.

www.distributed-home.com/wordpress

to run

Download a trial of twonkyvision or elgato eyeconnect media servers

www.elgato.com (30 day trial)
www.twonkyvision.de (30 day trial)

Download my bridge from sourceforge

Start the media server on your local pc or anywhere on the network.
select your media directories.

Start the mediabridge by clicking on the application, point safari at the address the bridge displays on startup.

Thats it.

[riddlemd]

hear ya on the job thing ;p bills are annoying
really its not so bad, I do Java programming, and get paid for "playing" with the internet. Some of the stuff I get to play with would make a hacker cry with envy.


This would only be useful on wifi, I doubt edge could handle the bandwidth, and it would probably be in violation of the media server tos agreements.

However, it works great over wifi, In theory you could modify my proxy to work over the internet, the code will be open source under gpl license, and there are open source media servers it will definitely work with.

For internet video, which usually is not 2 hour movies, the better solution is to use some of the commercial podcast software which should work because they use apache/tomcat servers or the wordpress plugin I previously mentioned, or iweb.

However for watching movies over your own lan or possibly (with slight modification) over wifi from your local starbucks my solution will work great.

I'm sure there will be a ton of other solutions now that apple release a developers guide. It was the guide that helped me solve my initial problems.

Good stuff, I work IT at an insurance firm -- does not sound glamorous, but I get all kinds of server parts for free (I have a 6,000$ server/switch set up at my house just from parts they let me take home. Which I don't even use, is there purely for being a total geek...)

Very user friendly.

For my bridge for instance. If you look at our home page you will see pictures of the non iphone version.

www.distributed-home.com/wordpress

to run

Download a trial of twonkyvision or elgato eyeconnect media servers

www.elgato.com (30 day trial)
www.twonkyvision.de (30 day trial)

Download my bridge from sourceforge

Start the media server on your local pc or anywhere on the network.
select your media directories.

Start the mediabridge by clicking on the application, point safari at the address the bridge displays on startup.

Thats it.

Tversity is free, no way to get it working with that? I'm not a fan of commercial software.

[michelleC]

Good stuff, I work IT at an insurance firm -- does not sound glamorous, but I get all kinds of server parts for free (I have a 6,000$ server/switch set up at my house just from parts they let me take home. Which I don't even use, is there purely for being a total geek...)



Tversity is free, no way to get it working with that? I'm not a fan of commercial software.

even worse beging a female geek...

I can let you have early access to the source if you know java, maybe Monday.

From what I've been reading I don't think tversity supports partial-content transfers, and I haven't tried it, I have used tversity , I lwas less than impressed and had some system problems after it overwrote some third pary ffmeg stuff.

If you know any java, you can always try some of the test upnp stuff from our homepage if that works there is a 50/50 chance it might work with the iphone.

I am going to pay the 50 dollars and get eyeconnect , I think its one of the best mac servers.

[riddlemd]

even worse beging a female geek...

I can let you have early access to the source if you know java, maybe Monday.

From what I've been reading I don't think tversity supports partial-content transfers, and I haven't tried it, I have used tversity , I lwas less than impressed and had some system problems after it overwrote some third pary ffmeg stuff.

If you know any java, you can always try some of the test upnp stuff from our homepage if that works there is a 50/50 chance it might work with the iphone.

I am going to pay the 50 dollars and get eyeconnect , I think its one of the best mac servers.

LOl, I bet... I don't do much in java, but I'm a code linguist so basically all I have to do is figure out what functions do what.

[michelleC]

I just can't get over how well this video streaming works, it seems to support all formats that the ipod does. It does not support mov but neither does the ipod.

I am working on the interface the first interface will be simple html, the final interface will be a browser built with javascript/ajax.

I just have to pull myself alway from watching movies and do some coding.

I will be downloading a ajax developers environment today.

remember

Beginners code using notepad

advanceed programmers use an ide

SuperAdvanced programmers find every easy way they can to get the job done, the less real work the better.

I laugh at some of my coleques who handcode html, because I use Dreamweaver and get the job down much faster.

[riddlemd]

I just can't get over how well this video streaming works, it seems to support all formats that the ipod does. It does not support mov but neither does the ipod.

I am working on the interface the first interface will be simple html, the final interface will be a browser built with javascript/ajax.

I just have to pull myself alway from watching movies and do some coding.

I will be downloading a ajax developers environment today.

remember

Beginners code using notepad

advanceed programmers use an ide

SuperAdvanced programmers find every easy way they can to get the job done, the less real work the better.

I laugh at some of my coleques who handcode html, because I use Dreamweaver and get the job down much faster.

Both the ipod and the iphone support .mov (.mov is just a form of h264 these days, just make sure to encode it at a level no higher then 3.1)


Lol, I do all my HTML/CSS/JAVA/EVERYTHING in notepad++ nice little IDE, but I can visualize CSS/HTML so it is not that bad.

[speedemonV12]

how is this coming along? any progress?

also, is it possible to access my computer on edge when i am outside of my local network? without it becoming a security issue?

[riddlemd]

Using apache you can have a .htaccess file and set a username and password -- Should keep it secure. And yes EDGE works fine for streaming music (gets a little spotty if you are moving around in a car though for some reason...)

I'm currently working on some "extras" that actually do commands on the machine that it is running on. So you could request the machine to reboot and/or start programs. I'm really thinking about integrating a mysql database into the system so it would be easier to keep track of things... 0.5a (will not be releasing copies until that benchmark.) Will probably be ajax based and will be blazingly fast compared to 0.1a.

[michelleC]

My app is coming along quite well too, because its a bridge to commercially available and open source media servers it does not need a data base, it will inheret all the bells and wistels, it only desinged for local networks, I don't like legal problems, but I am supplying the source code and really the guts is just a home grown multithreaded proxy server, so deployment options are going be quite flexible.

Its been in development about 6 months (the iphone variant about 2 days) and consist of about 3000 lines of java code.

I downloaded the aptiva ide, and trying to come up with a nice interface, I'm thinking collapseable panels for folders and content listing, with movies, pictures, videos and playlists subcategories.

Playlist support will be a problem, you can display a playlist but I can't seem to find a way you can play a sequence of songs from the playlist.

But give me a break , the iphone's only been activated a few days.

anybody interested in how this is going to work read this, doc has not been updated for the iphone but the concept is the same. Upnp is well know in the windows world but relatively unkown in the mac world, bonjour is a similar but different discovery method.

http://www.distributed-home.com/mediaw1/index.php?title=Bastet_Home

http://www.distributed-home.com/mediaw1/index.php?title=Code_Sandbox

Warning this is highly technical, "there are sharks in them there waters!"

[riddlemd]

My app is coming along quite well too, because its a bridge to commercially available and open source media servers it does not need a data base, it will inheret all the bells and wistels, it only desinged for local networks, I don't like legal problems, but I am supplying the source code and really the guts is just a home grown multithreaded proxy server, so deployment options are going be quite flexible.

Its been in development about 6 months (the iphone variant about 2 days) and consist of about 3000 lines of java code.

I downloaded the aptiva ide, and trying to come up with a nice interface, I'm thinking collapseable panels for folders and content listing, with movies, pictures, videos and playlists subcategories.

Playlist support will be a problem, you can display a playlist but I can't seem to find a way you can play a sequence of songs from the playlist.

But give me a break , the iphone's only been activated a few days.

anybody interested in how this is going to work read this, doc has not been updated for the iphone but the concept is the same. Upnp is well know in the windows world but relatively unkown in the mac world, bonjour is a similar but different discovery method.

http://www.distributed-home.com/mediaw1/index.php?title=Bastet_Home

http://www.distributed-home.com/mediaw1/index.php?title=Code_Sandbox

Warning this is highly technical, "there are sharks in them there waters!"

If you can pull a m3u file they contain (if they are formated right) the length in seconds of a song so the server could just start sending the next file as part of the stream when that amount of seconds is up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

[michelleC]

If you can pull a m3u file they contain (if they are formated right) the length in seconds of a song so the server could just start sending the next file as part of the stream when that amount of seconds is up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

Thanks, yes I know I can do that, and someservers support m3u, but Its not the same experience as an ipod.

Still working on that.

First I need to get the interface thing down, I started working last night with aptna, not bad eclipse plugin, but not as intuitive as you might think. makes heavy use of css, which iis fine except my server is not a full fledge web server, so I can only use embedded styles, which means I have to set up a stringreader and read the css , the js and the htm in one byte stream and pass it to the socket , a real pain.

The template I finally settled on that was easier to use, I started out with an acordian structure but decided to use the navigator style like the flickr app floating around. Anyway it works nice, And can handle servers with large amounts of files. thats the nice think about using a established dlna media server format vs just a straight file browser.
Anyway I will start publishing pieces of this on my wiki next week. Should also give you some insight into developing iphone ajax applications. As I learn you learn.

[riddlemd]

Woo I got a search working, lol.

[riddlemd]

iExpress Alpha3 avalible (Download! (http://www.mediafire.com/?4zsmwnvzdnu))

Changes:
+ Added search (within directory scope)
++Checkbox beside search allows for needle to be anywhere in name.
++Example: searching for Be would yeild only artists with name starting with be, when checkbox is checked any artist with Be in their name will show up.

+Updated Template system
++ icons/images no longer tied to core code and are now changeable per template.
++ default template icons updated.

+Updated config system
++ Config file is now located in its own file. (config.php)

+Layout change
++ Font has been reduced so search box is easier to use.
++ Optimized pages for double click zooming.

[edit]
How to install:
1. install apache on the computer you wish to share the files from, make sure the files are shared in the scope of the apache server.
2. install php4 or higher.
3. configure the config.php located in the iExpress folder (should be self explaining)

*4. Some ISP like cox will not let you host http servers on port 80, so you might want to change it to 8080 or something so you can access it from the net.

*5. Set up a .htaccess file to prevent unwanted people from accessing your files.

*Optional steps

How to get your ip#:
+Windows machine:
++ open your start menu
++ go to run
++ type cmd
++ type ipconfig
++ *If you are behind a router you will need to login to the router to find your public ip#

Accessing your machine from the a remote location over internet:
++ Open up web browser and enter http://YOURIP:PORT/
++ *By default port is 80, but read install #4.

[riddlemd]

I found a pretty lame problem with quicktime on the iphone... When it is handed a file from a server that is using a .htaccess to secure it (password file basicly) quicktime has no idea how to handle this and can't read the file... What does this mean?

At the moment if some one knows the address of your files they can view them... because you can't server side protect them...

[michelleC]

Accessing the files via the files on the file system like this, Is it progressive download and is something being cached. Because these phones have limited storage , mines only a 4gb (what can I say, kid in college, eats a lot of money) you would not want to cache anything.

How does something like a 1.0 gb h264 movie play.

On another topic, I think it might be possible to do rtsp streaming to the iphone using a hhttp tunneling proxy.

I was researching something else and came across this.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTSS/Concepts/chapter_2_section_14.html

I'm still playing with the ajax interface for the app I'm working on. I really don't want to run apache servers to access my movies files.

We have movie players tied to our media server on pretty much every tv in the house.

[riddlemd]

Accessing the files via the files on the file system like this, Is it progressive download and is something being cached. Because these phones have limited storage , mines only a 4gb (what can I say, kid in college, eats a lot of money) you would not want to cache anything.

How does something like a 1.0 gb h264 movie play.

On another topic, I think it might be possible to do rtsp streaming to the iphone using a hhttp tunneling proxy.

I was researching something else and came across this.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTSS/Concepts/chapter_2_section_14.html

I'm still playing with the ajax interface for the app I'm working on. I really don't want to run apache servers to access my movies files.

We have movie players tied to our media server on pretty much every tv in the house.

I'm guessing it caches as it loads (it will load frames ahead of time if you have enough bandwith) so you don't have to wait on it.

From a remote location (a random wifi I found out by a friends house) I can connect to my home server and stream 1g+ files within seconds -- watching movies from just about any wifi spot is a breeze. My movies are encoded at (1024bit video h264 -- 160bit audio aac -- original dvd resolution.)

Apache natively supports rtsp as well so you can skip ahead if you want.

[skwasha]

How are you building a playlist? I've been messing around with qtnext, but it seems to get ignored. since none of the standards work (m3u, etc. ) as noted earlier in the thread, I've been trying to figure out some other way to string videos together. Ideally, I'd like to play an ad and then a movie, and have the movie go to a new page after playing. trivial if qtnext works, but whenever I try it on the phone all it does is play the first movie and ignores the rest.

Any ideas?

thanx,
skwasha =)

PS - I've been experimenting and have found none of the following to work: autoplay, qtnext, playlists (m3u. qtl, etc.), auto hrefs embedded in a movie.

[Rdrnatn24]

i know this is an old thread, but did either of these programs finish?

[KenK2]

Is this thread dead?? I am trying to configure my iphone to stream with my server which is 1000 miles away and not having much luck :(

[essl]

Something I made recently...
http://code.google.com/p/iphone-streamer/
Converts videos by a click on the web page in iphone's safari...
Also shows them there...