>> StreamToMe 3.6+
>> OS X 10.6+
>> ServeToMe 3.6.4+
>> a Mac and at least one additional Mac or iOS device
>> 2.4GHz dual-core CPU recommended for 720p video
>> 15 Minutes
Difficulty: Medium
Depending on how old you are, you’ll have lived through a number of major shake-ups regarding video accessibility. Not that long ago, you had to make do with whatever the broadcasters served up, but since the mid-to-late 70s, things have moved on.
First, home videocassette recorders, or VCRs, enabled you to tape one channel while watching another; then Laserdisc and DVD arrived, making watching prerecorded video a less linear and painful experience, since you could easily jump to new scenes and episodes. Largely thanks to YouTube and rapid improvements in the speed of web connections, online video has become phenomenally popular, making it even easier to access and share video. Today, Apple’s attempting to encourage everyone to bin optical media for good. It wants you to move entirely to digital video, which, naturally, it makes available via iTunes podcasts and purchases that can be viewed on a Mac, PC, iOS device or Apple TV.
Use AirPlay to send video from your Mac to your TV, via your iPad and Apple TV!
There are, however, issues regarding video that relate to legacy or ripped content, and also storage limitations. Because video files tend to be huge, it’s common for them to be stored on a home’s ‘central’ Mac; start storing loads of video on Apple kit with limited storage – iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, MacBook Air – and you’ll fast run out of space. And so if your main Mac’s tucked away in an office, your video remains out of reach when you’re in another room, relaxing with a notebook or iOS device. If you’ve Home Sharing turned on in iTunes, you may be able to copy or watch some content, but that will be limited to what you’ve got lurking in iTunes and, in the case of iOS devices, to H.264 video. And that’s the other problem: if you’ve ripped your DVD collection to your hard drive, or have files in formats iTunes doesn’t deal with, such as AVI or MKV, they won’t play on your iOS device without third-party software, and even then you’re lumbered with storage issues.
StreamToMe cuts through all these problems. It comprises two parts: a server and a client. The server is installed on a Mac (or PC, but, naturally, we’re only covering the Mac version here) and provides access to user-defined sets of media. The client is then installed on a Mac or iOS device, enabling you to access and view said media over your wireless network; as an added bonus, the software transcodes popular video formats so they’ll play on your iOS devices. Note, though, that StreamToMe can’t play encrypted content from iTunes, such as pre-iTunes Plus music and commercial video.
StreamToMe enables you to watch video on your network without first transferring it to a device.
We detail how to set up the server component and how to use the StreamToMe client on your Mac or iOS device. At the time of writing, StreamToMe for Mac was free from the Mac App Store, while the server, ServeToMe, is permanently free. The iOS app for using StreamToMe is universal and works on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad; it’s $2.99 from the App Store.
Download ServeToMe to your Mac. Clicking the link will save a DMG file to your Downloads folder. Double-click the DMG and drag ServeToMe to Applications. Once that’s done, -click the ServeToMe window and select Eject (or eject it using a Finder sidebar). From your Applications folder, launch ServeToMe and click Open when you get the security dialog box. ServeToMe’s preferences will automatically open and the server will start running. You can start and stop the server at any time (and also access the preferences window) from the menu-bar icon.
By default, the server will output 480p video. This can be set to 720p if you have a fast network and a speedy computer for the server. (Use the highest setting at first and only reduce it if you encounter stuttering video.) Both iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums are set to share – uncheck the relevant checkboxes under Library integration. Finally, the Shared folders setting provides you with the means to define which folders StreamToMe apps will have access to. Initially, your Movies folder is selected, but you can use the ‘+’ button to add more; for example, you could add ~/Downloads, or a folder on an external drive where you store videos.
Install StreamToMe from the Mac App Store and launch it. The first thing you should see is the computers you’ve installed ServeToMe on, listed under ‘Local servers’. If you install the server software on a new machine, click the refresh button to update the list. Click one of the computers and you’ll see a list of defined shared folders, followed by iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums.
StreamToMe for Mac enables you to view videos and photos and listen to audio from local Macs.
Click a folder to access it or an item to load it into the main viewing area. When watching a video, hover the cursor over it to access a progress bar (drag the widget to skip to a later part of the movie) and standard playback controls. Click the four-arrows icon to go to full-screen, and use the button at the top-right to toggle between cropped and widescreen. Images and audio work in much the same way, with images defaulting to a slideshow format, with eight seconds per image.
At the bottom of the left-hand pane are several buttons. The set on the left determines whether or not items within the current folder loop. When clicked, the leftmost button, marked ‘1’, will ensure that only the current item is played. The second button will play everything within the folder in order. The third button randomises playback. The two buttons on the right are for accessing sort options and your history. The latter enables you quick access to media you’ve recently played, and you can clear the list by clicking the ‘Clear’ button at the top-right. The sort button provides access to various options for sorting the current content; these change according to the type of media you’re playing. For video, you can sort by name, modification date or file type, and in ascending or descending fashion; additionally, there’s an option for playing only items within the current folder or flattening the folder hierarchy – useful if you’ve a bunch of videos within folders that you want to play one after the other.
The iOS version of StreamToMe is functionally extremely similar to the Mac version. The two big advantages to it are the aforementioned transcoding (meaning that you can watch files of types not supported by Apple’s iOS apps) and AirPlay support. For the latter, you can cue up a video on your device, tap the AirPlay controls and then send it to your Apple TV – a simple means of getting content from your Mac to your TV. Note, though, that you’ll need a reasonably speedy network to fling high-quality video around!
Both the Mac and iOS versions of StreamToMe provide search functionality. Access a server and then click or tap within the search field, add a term and tap Search. Matching items will be listed.
