Streaming avi...

[paulos182]

I'm trying to find an app that will allow me to stream avi videos from my media storage device (WD mybook world). It has a media server built in but all of the free apps I have tried can only play the basic formats and not avi. Does anyone know of an app that works, I don't want to buy one and find out it's no better than the free apps...

[Turboladdade]

It's not about the container (the AVI format) but rather the codec your videos are encoded with. QuickTime can natively play some AVI files. Your best bet is to convert your AVI videos to something more native to the iPhone like QuickTime H.264.

[leonAzul]

Unlike Mac OS, iOS does not include the framework for plugging in a variety of codecs nor containers but instead relies on dedicated hardware for decoding video streams. At this time, that is limited to H.264 wrapped in MPEG, mp4, or MOV.

An open source/free software that can transcode as needed is VLC.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/streaming.html
In addition to its more common use as a media player, its primary design focus is as a media server. It will require a bit of effort to set up, but there are a number of useful presets and templates that cover the more common cases.

HTH

[monster_jayk]

I use AIR VIDEO app to play avi.