Before, if you wanted to do any http streaming you’d need expensive software or an even more expensive subscription to a streaming service. With a little work, you can get http streaming from your home computer.
To begin with, you’ll need a couple things. A Mac running Snow Leopard and a web server running on your host or locally on your home network. FTP access won’t do. There are numerous tutorials on how to get a web server running on a Mac and it’s easy so do that first.
Once you’re set, customize the following html and make it your web server’s index page.
If you’re not already using VLC, then you really should be. It’s an “everything” media player, streaming server, etc… We’ll be using it to create the mpeg transport stream that the iPhone/iPad will use for Http streaming.
Open up Terminal and type the following command:
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC –intf=dummy –sout=”#transcode{vcodec=h264,venc=x264{aud,profile=baseline, level=30,keyint=30,bframes=0,ref=1,nocabac},acodec=mp3, audio-sync,deinterlace}:standard{mux=ts,dst=-,access=file}” input.mov | mediastreamsegmenter -b http://your-ip/ -f /web-server-directory/ -t 10 -s 5 -D
Replace input.mov with the file path of the movie you would like to stream. Replace your-ip with the ip address of your web server. Replace web-server-directory to the local file path to your web server. Once you run command and there are no errors, you should start to see a sequence of filesequence.ts files on your web server and a file named prog_index.m3u8. Open up safari on your iPhone/iPad and type in your ip address and you should see your movie ready to be streamed! Have fun!
In part 2, I will cover streaming your computer Desktop to your iPhone/iPad using these same techniques.