Stream Music and Movies across Your Home - iConnected: Use AirPlay, iCloud, Apps, and More to Bring Your Apple Devices Together - page 59

Get Your Video Ready for Streaming
If you download all your movies and podcasts from the iTunes Store, you may as well stop
reading this section. Its video is perfectly formatted to work with your iPhone, iPad, iPod
Touch, and Apple TV as well as iTunes on your computer, so you have nothing to worry about.
However if, like me, you download video from different locations online, rip DVD movies,
or import footage from a camcorder, you're likely to run into problems when playing your
movies and streaming them over AirPlay. The issue is file format: iTunes requires MPEG-4 files
(with the filename extensions .m4v or .mp4) or Apple QuickTime files (.mov). Many people
have Window video files (.avi), which need to first be converted to a compatible format for
iTunes to be able to import them.
My favorite tool for the job is Elgato's Turbo.264 HD software and USB device
( www.elgato.com ) , which speeds the video conversion by using that USB device to assist your
computer's processor. The software can convert multiple video formats and offers handy pre-
sets for iOS devices and the Apple TV. Slower but cheaper alternatives are HandBrake ( ht-
tp://handbrake.fr ) , ffmpegX ( www.ffmpegx.com ), and Prism ( www.nchsoftware.com ).
For commercial DVDs you purchase, as well as homemade DVDs from friends and family,
the free HandBrake software easily creates iTunes-compatible video files that you then import
into iTunes, where they can be played or synced to your iOS devices. Just remember that com-
mercial DVDs you own and rip into your computer may be played back only for your personal
use on your devices, not given to others or used for public performances.
Stream audio from TVs, radios, and other analog devices via
an iOS device
So, what if you can't move your computer close enough to your audio source or move the audio
source close to your computer? You could connect the analog device to your iOS device instead, and
stream from it to an AirPlay device. It sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, it is actually quite complic-
ated! But if you have no other option, take a deep breath and read on.
You'll connect the audio cable from the audio source to your iOS device's audio jack, instead of to
your computer's line-in jack. Physically, that's easy. But iOS doesn't know that you want to send au-
dio in to your device so you'll need an app to receive the audio and a piece of kit that makes your
device think it's being sent audio from a microphone or guitar.
Readers of my book Make Music with Your iPad are familiar with 1K Multimedia's iRig and the
AmpKit Link. These little devices allow sound to be fed into an iOS device and, with the right soft-
ware and an Apple TV, you can stream analog input to an iOS device and out again.
So, to use an iOS device as the waystation between an analog audio source and your computer's
Airfoil application, you'll need a device like the iRig or AmpKit Link to your iOS device, which would
run an audio-input app such as Otreus's StudioMini . You'll also need a mini-to-1⁄4-inch jack adapter
to connect the audio cable to the iRig or AmpKit Link.