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#1 2008-08-11 12:49 am
Can I stream video from one Mac to another?
Here's what I want to do.
I have a Mac mini sitting with a nice huge TB hard drive full of ripped DVD's that I use for serving up to my Xbox 360 (Or AppleTV if you will).
But sometimes I don't really feel like watching the videos on my TV and I just want to play them on my MacBook for whatever reason or another.
If I mount the drive over the network then try to play it in QuickTime or VLC the video is choppy. Unwatchable.
Is there any way to play the videos on my Macbook as if they were being streamed and buffered onto my MacBook like the Xbox/AppleTV do? (i.e. they load a few minutes into a buffer to account for network lag)
Even if it requires a backend app running on the Mac mini.
I want to be able to watch whatever QT or VLC can watch over the network but without lag.
I tried VLC's supposed "Treat as a pipe" option but that made no video appear at all and gave an error. So I guess that wasn't it. And I don't know how to use the "Network" file option.
What are my options here? As cheap as possible. I don't want to record a stream or anything. Just watch lag free video on my MacBook as if I would on my Xbox/AppleTV.
Edit: Yeah, I am aware of FrontRow's ability to do this with whatever I can play in QuickTime, but it doesn't help with the other files that play better in VLC. Plus I can't run FR windowed.
Last edited by Jasoco (2008-08-11 1:17 am)
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#2 2008-08-11 8:25 am
- mrreet2001
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Re: Can I stream video from one Mac to another?
I do that with itunes on both machines.
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#3 2008-08-11 3:09 pm
Re: Can I stream video from one Mac to another?
I don't have time nor the patience to wait for my G4 mini to set all my videos up in iTunes. Some videos can't even be played in iTunes. Scratch that, iTunes is just too slow, too limited, too restricting, too stupid for what I want to do. iTunes for music. And music only. That's my view. (And podcasts. But mainly just Apple Keynotes and Best Week Ever blogs.)
I basically want the ability to play my videos like I can in FrontRow, but without having to enter into a fullscreen media center interface. (i.e. windowed.)
Playing around with FrontRow last night I noticed that with Perian I can even view FLV files (Flash Player video file) in FR as well as WMV files. Now if only I could get that same experience with QuickTime (At least, VLC as well if possible) I'd be able to actually be wireless with my laptop instead of tethered to a desk if I want to watch a video.
Surely there's an app or a setting to make QT/VLC compensate for network lag.
Last edited by Jasoco (2008-08-11 3:17 pm)
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#4 2009-10-01 5:30 am
- desepticon
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- Registered: 2006-07-26
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Re: Can I stream video from one Mac to another?
This can be done easily with afp and vlc. Just mount the networked drive on your hard drive over afp. Go to VLC in the advanced preferences. Under Input / Codecs - Access Modules - File, up the caching value to about 2000ms or more if you need it. (for some reason vlc treats afp as file input and not networked)
Now you can play your networked files in vlc on your macbook.
Also, if you like Quicktime better, you can use it. It seems to work pretty well without adjusting any settings. I prefer vlc as I can use it to watch movies that are still downloading. (as long as the download finishes before the movie does)
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#5 2009-10-09 3:39 pm
- Taos
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Re: Can I stream video from one Mac to another?
I have tried this before and got stutter, I believe you need an 11n network, which possibly means an upgrade to your mini.
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