HTTP Streaming to iPhone/iPad part 1

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.

<html>
<head>
<title>iPhone/iPodTouch Streaming</title>
</head>
<body>
<video width=”320″ height=”240″ controls=””>
<source src=”./prog_index.m3u8″ />
</video>
</body>
</html>

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.

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