AirFlick
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Give presentations on Apple TV with AirPDF and AirFlick
As I've been exploring the newest Apple TV, people keep asking to see if I can push boundaries in new directions. Apple TV's concept of a wireless video endpoint that connects to a large screen TV has excited a lot of people. Although I haven't yet been able to produce a way to show live game screens from iPhones (games are likely going to have to rely on local Apple TV resource processing for that, probably involving a unit jailbreak, at least at first), Apple's AirPlay does provide a ready way to give presentations using a Mac and Apple TV. In the video that follows after the jump, you'll see a new tool that I put together in response to TUAW reader requests. It transmits PDF files a page at a time to Apple TV. Read on to learn more about how this works and how Mac developers can easily hook into Apple TV transmission.
AirFlick allows streaming of arbitrary media, DVDs, even screencasting to the Apple TV (video)
If you've run out of things to do with your Apple TV and have been using it as a hockey puck now that the lakes are getting solid, you'd better go dig it out of the snowbank. Following up on her iOS AirPlay hacks, Erica Sadun has released an alpha version of a tool called AirFlick which enables the playback of any 'ol media files on an Apple TV. That's demonstrated in a video below. Things aren't perfect yet but already others are having a field day with the tool, the folks at TUAW figuring out how to not only stream whole DVDs to an Apple TV but their entire desktop image too by simply providing a VLC screen:// URL into the player. The quality looks a little iffy and, as you can see in the video below, it's not entirely error-free. But, if you have the smallest little bit of patience, it's sure worth a shot, eh?
Screencast your Mac to Apple TV over AirPlay
That screen you're looking at there? It's not my Mac. It's my Apple TV. TUAW reader James Low wondered if you could stream your OS X screen using the screen:// feature of VLC along the lines of the instructions found on this blog post. I decided to test it out using the same method I described in my earlier DVD-to-Apple TV post. Instead of streaming from my DVD (namely via dvdread:///dev/rdisk5@1:3-), I substituted screen://, as follows. /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -vv screen:// --intf=rc '--sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=2048,acodec=mp4a,ab=192}:standard{mux=ts,dst=-,access=file}' | mediastreamsegmenter -f /Library/WebServer/Documents/stream -D It worked. All other instructions remain the same as from the DVD post. So what are the downsides? First, the image was a bit blurry due to the H.264 transcoding and the limited bit rate, but it wasn't too bad. It remained reasonably readable at all times. Second, there was a distinct lag between what was going on at the Mac and what was being shown on the Apple TV. Pausing the stream, like I did to take this screen shot, slightly increased that lag. On the bright side? Screencasting. From your Mac. To your Apple TV. I think that's pretty cool.
Apple TV plays live-converted AVI files using Air Video Server, AirPlayer, and AirFlick
Although I knew that the AirFlick video tool I posted about earlier today could theoretically pass transcoded video streams to Apple TV for playback, my initial attempts with VideoLAN Client transcoding more or less went nowhere. Then, TUAW reader BC reposted a comment earlier this evening that he originally left on the MacRumors forums. In that comment, he discussed how to add live conversion to my AirFlick app by using the server component of AirVideo, a video streaming solution that allows your Mac to serve video to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Although I had previously attempted to play back AirVideo m3u8 playlists on the Mac without success, BC suggested that the Apple TV supported them. He was right. Video proof follows after the break.
AirFlick turns Macintosh into an AirPlay data server
If you own a Macintosh and an Apple TV, I have created a new tool that allows you to stream data outside of iTunes. It's called AirFlick, and it's now available in alpha form for download and testing. Last week, I put together a related application called AirPlayer that allows you to stream video from your iPad using Apple's built in AirPlay services and demonstrated it on TUAW. AirPlayer works by emulating an Apple TV using your Mac's built in Bonjour networking capabilities. Below is a description and brief video explaining how it works. Update: TUAW reader BC adds: How to Add Live Conversion to Erica Sadun's AirFlick App Ok, by doing this hack, you can stream ANY video format sitting on your Mac to your AppleTV. I'm testing out an mkv file right now, and it works like a charm! Download the unofficial Mac AirVideo client here. Start playback of a video using live conversion from within this unofficial client, it should hand off the streaming video to Quicktime X. Inspect the stream by viewing the Movie Inspector (check the "Window" menu for Quicktime). Write down that url. Paste that url into Erica Sadun's Airflick app and boom now your AppleTV can basically play any video you throw at it! Looking forward to someone streamlining the process into a neat little app. OPTIONAL One extra little note: you don't have to necessarily download the unofficial Mac AirVideo client above. You can instead begin playback of a video from within the AirVideo iphone app, then go to the mac serving up the stream, and type "ps ax | grep ffmpeg", and grab the alphanumeric string following the --conversion-id flag. Then paste into AirFlick the following: http://[YOUR-SERVER'S-IP-ADDRESS]:45631/live-playback-2.4.0/index_[CONVERSION-ID].m3u8
