AirFlick: "Stream Data Outside Of iTunes" To Your Apple TV
by Joe White
December 26, 2010
TUAW's Erica Sadun has managed to make another AirPlay hacking advancement. After creating AirPlayer, the Mac OS X app that allows users to stream content from an iDevice to a Mac computer, Sadun has developed another tool. It's called AirFlick, and it allows users to "stream data outside of iTunes," in any format, from a Mac to an Apple TV (2G) device.
Currently, an alpha version of AirFlick is available to download from Sadun's site. It's free to use, and free to download. So, if you own an Apple TV, and a Mac, check out this tool. Additionally, a friendly TUAW reader (called BC) has offered some advice on adding "live conversion" to AirFlick:
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].m3u8For a run through of AirFlick's capabilities, check out Sadun's video below. To check out Sadun's full range of AirPlay tools, head over to her site.