I’ve been looking for a media streaming solution: there is a scenario where I need to stream audio/video from a Linux box to the iPhone. The server end can be nerdy, but the client end needs to be simple and for non-technical users.

I had been having pretty good results with media hive, but unfortunately I ran into a situation where I needed to stream video that was not in a format that the iPhone would recognize (not H.264 I assume). I was also having some problems with the client UI – it was a bit confusing.

The Solution?

In my searching I ran across Air Video. It handles the transcoding on the fly for videos, and has a very simple iPhone interface. The drawback here? The server is only for Mac/Win. Boo.

On a lark, though I decided to check out the forums and found a very interesting thread entitled “linux support?” I encourage you to read a bit of it. It goes something like this:

User1: Nice app, I like it. Is there a linux port planned?

Developer: Probably not, Linux is a very small user base.

User2-3: Maybe not as small as you think, I could use it too.

Developer: My site visitor logs show very few Linux visitors. Also, packaging for various distros seems like a lot of work.

Users4-10: I sure would like a native linux version. Will it work in wine? I could help with a native version. etc.

It goes on like this for a bit, with more people coming on helping each other (and the developer) and expressing their desire for a linux port. Eventually, the developer says:

We could release a CLI application. However it would be without remote support, at least for the first release. Also we would need someone to build the ffmpeg, faac (encoder) and mp4creator (required for offline conversion, could be tricky to build)

And you know what? He did!

How cool is that!

Great Success

This isn’t a perfect solution for my particular need – I’m still looking for something more like media hive but with transcoding-on-the-fly, and a little cleaner client UI – but that’s not the point here.

The point is so many times I’ve seen Linux users express interest in a port only to be dismissed out of hand. I was very glad to see a developer make the effort.

I also found it funny that the Linux users and the developer quickly agreed that a CLI-only version was just fine and dandy!