Server Streaming app: Air Video or Streamtome ?

[Abula]

Hi,

I have 22tb server Xeon E3-1230 with about 15tb full of legally owned movies, most of them on x264/mkv format, that its used to serve 3 media streamers around the house. But im now interested into being able to stream/transcode on the fly to ipads (2 n 3).

I was looking into the app store and 2 stand out, Air Video and Streamtome, but idk which would you guys recommend, seems Air Video is older with more reviews and good rating, but last update was on December, not sure if or how would it work with the ipad3, or what resolution would it stream. Streamtome seems to have less reviews and its its rating is slighly lower than Air video, but seems to be recently updated (april) so might have better support for ipad3???

So im looking for some opinions into which you guys think i should buy or if you have another app that would work better.

Thanks for your opinions,

 

[chevyguy]

Both will work. Here is my experience. Air video I donot use, however I would guess that it converts on the fly(probably most files formats) and would be very CPU intensive to do this. Now I do use Streamtome and love it. Most of my 720p movie files are .mkv and Stream to me supports my .mkv files natively and does not convert them on the fly and uses very little CPU to do this and the stream is very smooth and the picture is incredible(make sure to use the 2mb for the streaming, or it will not look right). With Streamtome, any other file I use(.avi, .mp4) it converts on the fly and hits the CPU pretty hard. Hope this helps ya some.

 

[Abula]

Both will work. Here is my experience. Air video I donot use, however I would guess that it converts on the fly(probably most files formats) and would be very CPU intensive to do this. Now I do use Streamtome and love it. Most of my 720p movie files are .mkv and Stream to me supports my .mkv files natively and does not convert them on the fly and uses very little CPU to do this and the stream is very smooth and the picture is incredible(make sure to use the 2mb for the streaming, or it will not look right). With Streamtome, any other file I use(.avi, .mp4) it converts on the fly and hits the CPU pretty hard. Hope this helps ya some.

I gave it a shot to Streamtome and its been really easy to setup and get it running. But your tip of the 2mg was what made the difference, it seems by automatic it lowers it to 480/360, and the picture quality is degardaded a lot. I only tested 10 1080 x264/mkv, 9 out 10 played flawlessly, great picture and sound, but one had some stuttering on the audio, cant say for sure if its streamtome or the encoding on the movie, will test more later.

Installing the server only offers 720p on the servetome (server side), if it were not to convert them on the fly, would be still not be tampering with the 1080p scaling it down to 720p? i probably cant tell the difference as it look very good as it is, just wondering. Either way i bought it knowing by the description was a 720p streamming app, so its fine, still makes me wonder.

Im really happy with streamtome, seems very solid streamer, thanks again for your opinion.

 

[chevyguy]

You're most welcome glad it worked out for ya. As for the server if it's streaming most of your 1080 files and not hammer the CPU on the server computer then I wouldn't worry about it. Yeah the 2mb thing took me a while to figure out, glad I was able to save you the aggregation I went through, lol!

Sent from my iPad using iPF

 

[Abula]

I been testing for a day, and its been really great streaming to an ipad2 and ipad3, here is my testing on streaming a 1080p x264 MKV,

@chevyguy, i think the cpu load is due that this are 1080p, so i think its still transcoding it to 720p, would love if it would be able to send it at 1080p untouched, but then again there is also the ipad2 use.... so i guess its fine as it is also. But really surprise me that a Xeon E1230 has spikes of 55% load on it, this is a 3.4ghz sany bridge quad with hyperthreadin (similar to i7 2600k, just no OCing), so a i3 dual core might be fine with one stream, but might be close.

Im kinda glad i got the quad for my server now =), will test 2 streams at the same time on the weekend to see if can handle dual transcoding to 2 ipads at the same time.

 

[chevyguy]

Yeah it can hit a CPU hard. I know all my files I use with the app are encoded at 720p .mkv so it doesn't hit my CPU hardly at all. I'm just using my little laptop for it and it seems to be great, it's the on the fly converting that hit my CPU bad. Glad you like the app, it's great for the .mkv files!

Sent from my iPad using iPF

 

[kyu2130]

have you ever thought of using something like Plex media server or XBMC. Both would give you the freedom to stream to your iPads as well as other pcs. the system apps are free you only pay for your iPad app. plus you could use the iPad as remote if you have a pc running plex or XBMC hooked up to a tv.