Posts
(Oh don’t worry, I’m not getting tired of making up lame puns for the titles of these sections. I know you were concerned.)
Would you finally like to see your media in all its glory? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat to see what new, lame pun I can come up with for the next section? If so, continue reading and be happy. Be very happy.
Media Servers Galore
Boxee, XBMC, MediaPortal, Miro, Plex, OH MY! How is one to choose!?
Well, I looked at 3 different criteria:
- Stability
- Update Cycle
- Media Feature Set
- Plugin Capabilities
- Scraping Ninjitsu
- Customization / Skinnability
Honestly when I first started writing this section, I completed the entire thing using XBMC. It worked, and it was awesome but it required a LOT of extra work to get everything to be automated. I had to install a VM or Mono/Wine. It involved shell scripts and cron jobs. It was pretty crazy. (Incidentally, if you don’t know what “VM”, “Mono/Wine”, “shell scripts” or “cron jobs” means, be thankful.)
Then, the other day I just happened to check out plexapp.com and noticed this.
I thought, ya know, how different can it be? But I was intrigued especially because of the integrated “Media Manager”. Then after I took a look at the sneak-peak walkthrough I thought I’d give it a shot.
Folks I have to tell you that Plex/Nine (Yeah I think the frontslash was a nice touch too.) is amazing. Much like these guys and these guys, the devs over at Plex know how to do code right.
Plex
History
Plex (like Boxee and 99% of the other options out there) started as a spin-off of XBMC. What sets Plex/Nine apart is that they’re not planning on just updating a bit of XBMC here or there. Instead, they have a road map for substantially modifying the architecture; and if Plex/Nine is any indication, they’re well on their way to developing something really fantastic.
Oh and did I mention, they’re doing this all for free?
XBMC History
XBMC began as a media center for the original Xbox (hence XBox Media Center). Later though it was ported over to become a cross-platform center of your media universe. Heard of Plesk? Ya know Boxee? They both have XBMC running at their core. But you don’t need either of them. In fact, it’s better if you don’t.
XBMC is extremely customizable, there is a HUGE following of people that contribute to the project itself and there’s another gaggle of people who contribute to skins which can make your XBMC installation look completely different with just the flip of a switch.
Installation
The installation of Plex is extremely simple. Drag. Drop. Done.
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Go to the Plex website here.
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Click the “Download Plex/Nine” button.
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Save.
Open.
Drag.
Drop.
Go on, you know want to. All the cool kids are doing it.
Initial Configuration
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Spotlight “Plex”
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Plex will perform all of its “pre-pubescent-getting-ready-for-the-prom” tasks. And by “pre-pubescent-getting-ready-for-the-prom”, I mean “PREPARING FOR MEDIA LIBRARY DOMINATION!!!”.
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The first time Plex opens you’ll be prompted whether you want to allow it to accept incoming connections. You definitely want to do this.
Click “Allow”
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Once it’s finished, Plex will begin the installation wizard. This is a quick and easy way of configuring your basic media library settings.
You’re welcome Plex. I love you too.
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I was a little surprised to see a license agreement on an open source app, but I guess I’d keep all my bases covered too.
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Your movie locations are the first real thing Plex needs to know about.
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Click the “+” and browse to the directory where your ARCHIVED movies are going to live. For me it’s “Qmultimedia/movies”.
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Click “Next” and it will now ask you for the directory of your TV Shows.
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Clicking the “+”, I’m now going to select “Qmultimedia/television”
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Click “Next” again and it’s going to ask about your music.
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I’ll click “+” one last time and select “Qmultimedia/music”
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Click “Next” once again and select which of the plugins you’d like to install.
This is one of the great things about Plex. Unfortunately some of the better plugins aren’t listed in this list. But we’ll revisit that later.
Check the ones you’d like.
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Click “Next” again (almost done) and you’ll see a strange item.
Plex, due to some of the plugins it has access to, will play video directly from a website (like Hulu) using the built-in Flash player.
However, if you want to stream these videos to your iPhone, Plex needs to install a little hired muscle. This is what Soundflower is.
Make sure the box is checked.
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Click “Next” for a final time and you’ll get the opportunity to send your email to Plex so that you can get announcements and such.
You also are given the option to send anonymous usage statistics to the Plex dev team. Nothing personal is sent and this really does help them out so if you don’t have your tin foil hat on, go ahead and leave the box checked.
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Last setup screen you’ll see. YAY!
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OH! You thought you were done didn’t you!
Soundflower requires some special access to do its thing. You need to go ahead and enter your password.
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You should now be presented with a menu item dropdown for the Media Manager. You’re all set!
Today’s going to be really fun. We’re finally getting down to what it is that you came here for. Get in the drivers seat. It’s finally time to take your media for a spin.
We’ll be installing multiple programs to do what seems to be the same thing. The reason for this is that I don’t want to pigeon-hole you into one way of doing things. This is the ultimate media center and there are programs that do certain things better than others. We’ll install the best ones and if you need to use them, they’ll be there.
Music
iTunes Rant
iTunes is horrible.
- It’s slow.
- It doesn’t give you the flexibility to do what you want with the media YOU PURCHASED.
- It’s also closed.
- It “phones home” and tells Apple what you’re listening to without asking you first.
- It also doesn’t give you the option of storing the information related to your music files in the file itself like every other music organizer does. Hard drive crashes and you’ve lost all your play counts and ratings.
Apple Why Do You Vex Me So?
If you want to sync with your iPhone on a Mac, you’re hosed. Apple keeps the music library on the iPhone encrypted. But since you have your NAS setup to host your music (you do don’t you?) then the media library access you need on your media server only requires playback.
Songbird
Welcome Songbird. :)
Songbird is a fantastic open-source project created by the Mozilla Foundation that will blow you away. It does everything iTunes does and more. It plays more media formats than iTunes ever thought about and the format of the data it presents looks FANTASTIC on a television. It has also come a HUGE way in the last year so if you’ve tried it before, try it again. Trust me.
Installation
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Download Songbird from here.
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Save the DMG
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Open the DMG
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Drop the Songbird application onto the Applications folder
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Spotlight “Songbird”
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When you run Songbird for the first time it will run you through a pre-use installation which basically just involves a bunch of “Continue” clicking.
The only exception is the step that asks which folder to import your music from. For this step I chose “Do not import” because we’re going to go through our preferences in a second and do this step at that time.
Preferences
Open up Songbird’s Preferences ,
Main Tab
Songbird allows us to purchase and download music from a variety of sources should we choose to do that. The main preferences tab is where we’re going to set our default paths for any files that we might download through Songbird.
Since we’re developing this media server with our NAS in mind I’m going to set the download location to “Qdownload/incoming/whatever”.
Therefore for Media Downloads, I set my save location here:
For File Downloads, I set my save location here:
I also checked the “Close it when all downloads are finished” checkbox.
Playback Tab
Store ratings info within each file’s file metadata
Check this box if:
- You are the only one accessing your media files.
- The ratings you set via Songbird are going to be your “global” ratings for the entire family/network.
Uncheck this box if:
- You want everyone to be able to save their own ratings.
Here we’re going to check the “Store ratings info within each file’s file metadata” box. This is important because we want to be able to port our metadata to other media applications. This is one of many things iTunes won’t do. They keep all of that information locked in their database. On the other hand, if you have multiple people accessing these music files, you’ll probably want to leave this box unchecked.
You’re “It”
Put simply, a “tag” is a string of text laid out in a standardized format so that a media program can read it and parse out all of the information. Usually this information is stored at the beginning of the file before any of the audio data.
MP3 files store their information in what are known as ID3 tags. There are multiple versions of the ID3 tag. The latest of which is version 2.4.
AAC files store their information in AAC tags. The AAC tag format was created by Apple (they were the first ones to use AAC files in a mainstream way). Alternatively AAC files can store their tags in the APE format which was developed for the “Monkey’s Audio” format. I did a little research but I’m not sure whether or not iTunes can read the APE format.
Privacy Tab
Unless you’re planning on doing something through Songbird you’d need to keep private, set these:
- Keep my history for at least 90 days
- Remember what I’ve downloaded
Media Importer Tab
Coming From iTunes
If you currently have an iTunes library that you would like to import all of your media information from, at this point you would click “Browse” and find the iTunes library file (usually located in your home folder under “Music/iTunes”).
What’s REALLY slick is that if you want to use iTunes AND Songbird on the same system (or via a shared iTunes library) you can tell it to import tracks and playlists from iTunes but also EXPORT any tracks or playlists you create in Songbird. This more or less will keep your two libraries in sync (until you decide to ditch iTunes :).
Once you select the options you’d like, you can click “Import Library”.
Import Files Only
If you have all your information in your media files, you can simply have Songbird watch a folder for changes and it will update the library only for those files as opposed to rescanning ALL files.
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Click “Watch Folders”
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Check “Automatically watch for changes in the following folder”
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Choose the folder where we’ll want to import our library from. Since we heart our NAS, let’s load from there.
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Once done, close the preferences window and you will be asked if you would like to import the folder you’ve chosen to watch. Click yes and off it’ll go. If you have a large library, it might take a while.
Video
Quicktime
Again another example of Apple saying “You don’t need that.”, Quicktime comes with the ability to play MOV, SOME MP4 files and that’s about it. Let’s fix that.
Perian
Perian is an open source application which is touted as “The Swiss Army Knife for Quicktime” and a swiss army knife it is. With Perian you can play almost anything via Quicktime.
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Visit http://perian.org
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Click the download link
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Open the image and double-click the Perian prefPane file
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When asked, select the option to install for all users
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Enter your user’s password
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At this point The Perian prefPane should open.
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Close System Preferences
VLC
An example of how to do a media player the “right” (although not as POLISHED) way.
VLC is the ultimate media player. It’s open source, it’s free and it will play ANYthing. Scratched DVD? Damaged Divx? Some-random-new-video-format? Piece of cake. Let me put it this way: if you set a vinyl record on top of your computer and told VLC to play it, it would say “No problem”.
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Go to: http://www.videolan.org/vlc
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Click the big “Download VLC” button.
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Save your DMG file and open it
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Install it by dragging VLC to the Applications folder and dropping it.
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Open VLC to make sure that it installed properly and heck, try playing something! Anything!
Summary
Today we briefly went over and installed a few media apps. Now you have a great solution to listen to your music and a passable solution to watching your videos.
We’re going to cut the media application installation a little short here because tomorrow is Plex Time and it’s going to be a doozy. Trust me, you’re going to need a break. Rest up, get some water and maybe some trail mix. You’ll need all of your energy.
You’ve probably got CDs, DVDs, music files, video files, home movies, photos, the whole 9 yards. Here’s how to get rid of them and organize them.
Digitize It!
This blog post isn’t currently going to go into detail about how to digitize the various analog parts of your life. But the peeps over at Lifehacker have already done a wonderful job of getting you started.
TorrentVision
Transmission To Houston
Now we’re going to download and install a BitTorrent client. This is the program that will go out and find other computers that are currently seeding (sharing) the file that you want.
It’s Gonna Come A Flood!… errr Torrent
Let’s talk old-school for a second. Remember Napster? Yeah, Napster was the first P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing environment that made it easy for people to share files. It was a brilliant idea but when people started using it mainly to transfer songs that the RIAA thought was against their bottom line, they sued Napster. (Incidentally Napster attempted to negotiate with the RIAA and said that they would start a “pay” version of their service. $3.00 for a single and $1.00 otherwise. The RIAA told them to go to hell. A year or two later, iTunes was born but that was TOTALLY different. I mean, TOTALLY. *ahem*)
And although P2P has its disadvantages, the strategy itself does not require a single central server. This is what you want. The problem with the Napster debacle was that everyone had to connect to the Napster servers to get a list of the rest of the peers. Without that list, you had no peers and therefore instead of “P2P” you were just left with “P2”.
The RIAA could sue Napster because Napster was Napster. It was a central business with servers that you could go to and say “Hey, we don’t know how to deal with you whippersnappers. So we’re going to sue you.” If your main purpose is freely distributing files without regard to what it is or where it comes from, that’s a problem.
Enter BitTorrent.
BitTorrent had a new way of thinking about transferring files. Basically Bram Cohen approached it from the point of view that there’s no reason to have one central server. All that really matters is that the interested parties (we’ll just use two in our example but there can be hundreds) know about each other. And therefore all you really need to do is to play matchmaker. This is similar to what Napster was doing in the P2P model but whereas Napster was the only place you could connect to to get a file, due to the open source nature of BitTorrent, there are dozens of independent servers that track torrent files. New ones can pop up at any given time and other ones can go away. Each one has no affiliation with the other. If you shut one down, another one can pop up immediately.
Another pro to BitTorrent is that it fights the concept of “leeching”. Leeching is the act of someone downloading something but not sharing it with the rest of the community. In a P2P model, you could download tons of stuff but never give anything back. When you use BitTorrent, your download speeds are directly proportional to the ratio of your downloads to uploads. This makes it advantageous to “seed” the files you’ve downloaded.
Lastly, BitTorrent uses a “multi-part” approach to downloading files. When you download a file from the internet, it starts at the beginning of the file and goes until it gets to the end. With a BitTorrent download, each file is broken up into hundreds of parts and each part can be downloaded independently from any of the other people “seeding” the file. This makes it extremely fast when downloading large files.
Legal Shmegal
For those of you concerned with torrenting, BitTorrent is not illegal. BUT what you transfer OVER BitTorrent COULD be illegal. I would suggest you check the legalities of your area if you’re unsure about anything herein. And remember, the way we’re setting this up, everything you do is potentially viewable by your ISP/cable company.
As with the rest of this guide, I’m assuming that whatever you do is something you’ve found to be legal under your government and I take no responsibility for anything you do.
There are two main contenders in the “Hey I’m a free BitTorrent client for the Mac” arena. uTorrent and Transmission. uTorrent just came out of beta a few weeks ago and it is a FANTASTIC program. Coming in at a paltry 1.48MB download, it’s the most svelte of all the BitTorrent clients out there. But we’re not going to use it. Why?
Transmission has been around a lot longer on the Mac than uTorrent and its maturity shows in a lot of the advanced features that I’m going to have you set up. A couple of them are security-related so I would highly recommend you follow my lead on this.
Installation
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Download Transmission here.
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Click the .dmg link under “Mac OS X”
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Save and open the DMG
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Spotlight “Transmission”
Configuration
Open up Transmission’s Preferences ,
Transfers - Adding Pane
We’ll start at the “Transfers” tab. Make sure that “Default Location” is set to “Same as torrent file”.
We also want to “Trash original torrent files” and we don’t want to display a window when opening a torrent file.
Transfers - Management Pane
- Under the “Management” pane, we’ll set the “Stop seeding at ratio” to 1.5. This is a good ratio. You’ll get a decent speed boost and you’ll be helping to keep the files moving.
- I also like to limit the number of downloads and seeds at 3 each.
- Finally let’s turn off the “Download Complete” noise. I don’t want this going off when I’m watching my media.
Cloud Seeding
Seeding the torrents you download is the lifeblood of BitTorrent. You have the option though, to limit how much of a torrent you seed by setting its “Seeding Ratio”.
As an example, if you download a 10MB file and have your seeding ratio set to 1.0, it would effectively mean that you are saying you approve of sending that file back out to the BitTorrent community only once (or 10MB).
If you set your seeding ratio to 1.5 then you’re saying that you approve of sending that same file out 1.5 times (or 15MB). What happens to the person who is downloading it once they reach .5? The rest of the file simply starts seeding from someone else.
1.5 is usually a good rule of thumb for a seeding ratio. You’re giving just a bit more than you’re getting. If everyone did that there would never be any problems with too few people seeding files.
Bandwidth
I typically cap my bandwidth at 50KB/sec. This causes minimal impact when I need to transfer files from my NAS remotely.
Peers
This is a very important pane. You want to click the “Update” button found here and let Transmission download a list of known bad peers.
Once it’s finished, you need to click both the “Prevent known bad peers from connecting” and “Automatically update weekly” checkboxes.
Network
On this pane we’re mainly concerned with the “Randomize port on launch” checkbox. Make sure it’s checked.
Remote
- The remote tab will be used for some things we’ll be doing later but let’s go ahead and configure it while we’re here. Check the “Enable remote access” box.
- Also check the “Require authentication” checkbox and enter a username and password in there. Make em good!! And don’t use the default ‘admin’ username!
- Also, change the default “Listening Port”. You can enter any number in this box less than 64000.
Security Rule 43.89
A good rule of thumb when dealing with computer security is that default values are baaaaaaaaaaad.
Moose Tracks (With Peanut Butter Chunks)
Automating the downloading of your shows and the cataloging of your media is my #1 priority in this guide. All the other stuff is nice but this is über crucial. So for these topics and these topics only, I’m going to present to you two different tracks.
My Philosophy
This entire guide has been written from the point of view that paid software is good, freeware is better and open source is best. But unfortunately, the fact of the matter is, that the majority of the people who use freeware and open source software don’t pay for it. If everyone who used freeware or open source software “paid” for ONE of the applications that they use, there would be a lot fewer dead/bug-filled projects out there.
So on this section, there are going to be a couple of paid applications which I feel are more polished and have a more regular update cycle than their open source alternatives. And for pity sake, if you use the open source version, donate to the developer!
- Track #1: Is the “Open Source University” track which will contain only free and/or open source programs.
- Track #2: Will be the “Tonight at ‘The Pit’, Everyone Gets Paid.” track which will feature a paid closed-source alternative.
BitTorrent, Your Personal DVR
Harkening back to our “set it and forget it” philosophy, we don’t want to have to think about which TV shows are airing when. I watch “House, M.D.” every week and I couldn’t tell you which channel it’s on or when its air time is.
Open Source University
For this track we’re going to be using the “Torrent Episode Downloader” (ted). ted scours the internet for any TV shows you tell him about and downloads them for you automatically.
Pros
- Free and Open Source
- Works very well after some configuration
- Autopilots your BitTorrent client
- Allows custom RSS feeds to be added
Cons
- Bugs are slow to be fixed.
- New features aren’t added very quickly.
- Runs constantly on your system.
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Download ted here.
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Save and open the DMG
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Spotlight “ted”
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The main ted subscription window should pop up. Let’s add a show.
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For this example, I’m going to add “30 Rock”.
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Click “Add” and you’re all set.
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Repeat these steps for all of the television shows you want to track.
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Once you have your list, select them all.
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Go to the Edit menu and select “Edit all shows…”
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You should now see a window which will let you set values for all of your shows at once. Set them like I have them below.
If you don’t care to download HD quality videos, you can feel free to remove the “720p” and uncheck “Keywords”.
Preferences
We have one quick preference that we need to change before we’re ready for prime time.
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Open Preferences ,
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Click on the “General” tab.
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Set the path where you would like ted to save your torrent files.
For ted, I selected my “Qdownloads/incoming/television” folder because the majority of my feeds will be downloading television shows. If I had a feed for something like “pictures of boats”, I would have selected “Qdownloads/incoming/pictures-of-boats”.
This lets me more easily set up automated organization which we’ll look at later.
Troubleshooting
The biggest problem with ted is that it won’t go out and figure out whether or not HD content exists before it lets you check the “Download in HD” checkbox.
Let’s say for example that I really like “30 Rock”. I obviously enjoy it best in HD so I naturally check the “Download in HD” checkbox. Unfortunately it just so happens that “30 Rock” isn’t available in HD. So when you try to get a new show, it will just say “No episodes available” or “No torrents found” which is a rather misleading response.
Initially what you’ll have to do is to watch your subscriptions and when there’s a show that is failing, you might want to do the following:
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Right click on the offending show and select “Edit”
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In the window that pops up, remove the “720p” from the “Keywords” list.
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Click “Save”
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Click “Check All Shows”
Hopefully at this point it will find the episodes that you want. There’s no guarantee that you’ll actually find what you’re looking for. ted works great when it works but when it doesn’t it can be a huge pain.
Tonight at the Pit, Everyone Gets Paid
For the closed-source alternative we’ll be taking a look at “Automatic”. It’s reasonably-priced and very well-done. Here’s an overview:
Pros
- Extremely polished interface
- Very few noticeable bugs
- Runs only when looking for torrent updates
- Allows custom RSS feeds to be added
- “Smart selects” HD content
- It does what it does well and gets out of your way
Cons
- It costs $20 USD
Installation
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Download Automatic from here.
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When prompted, open the file with “Archive Utility”
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This will place a .prefpane file in your Downloads folder.
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Double-click it to install.
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When prompted, tell it you want to install it for all users.
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The preference pane should open.
If it doesn’t, spotlight “System Preferences”. You should see an icon has been installed for Automatic. Click it.
Settings
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The first thing you’ll notice is the nag screen… nagging you. You have 14 days to evaluate.
Click “Continue”.
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The initial General panel for Automatic is very sparse. Let’s set the main options.
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Set the main options
We want to be good net citizens and don’t want to be hammering servers every 30 minutes so let’s set the delay up a bit. “1 hour” should be good.
Also we need to set the folder where Automatic will download our torrent files to.
Mimicking what we did when we set up ted, I’m going to select the “television” torrents folder on my NAS. Choose your folder appropriately.
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All done! Now let’s add some subscriptions.
Standard Subscriptions
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Click “Subscriptions” in the upper right.
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Click the “+” icon in the bottom-left and select “TV Show…”
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You’ll get a screen that is very similar to what we saw when we installed ted earlier. Basically a listing of all of the TV shows that Automatic knows about.
Select one that you enjoy.
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Now, here’s one of the great things about Automatic. If HD content isn’t available for your selection, the “Download in HD” checkbox will be disabled. So it’s not a bug. It’s a feature. :)
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You’ll also get the opportunity to set the starting point where you would like to begin your subscription. So if you missed a few episodes of “How I Met Your Mother”, you can drag the bar in the episode area down to where you want to begin capturing episodes from.
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Click “Add” and it will be added to your list.
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Repeat these steps for as many shows as you’re interested in.
Custom Subscriptions
Now you should have a good selection of shows, but what happens if the show you want isn’t in the list?
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Welcome to ezrss.it. Go there and enter your missing show in the box on the homepage. In this example, I know there’s a show on the BBC called “Natural World” that I’m interested in.
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When I submit my search, it only found one hit so it took me immediately to that show’s episode page.
You’ll see here that it found exactly what I wanted and a bunch of episodes are listed. But if you look especially closely, you’ll notice that there are actually TWO entries for each episode. One in “HDTV” format and one in “PDTV” format.
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I happen to want the HDTV format so let’s scroll up the page and enter “HDTV” in the “Quality” text field. and click “Search”.
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Now that’s more like it. Once you have your feed set up as you’d like, look back through and make sure all the episodes you would want to download are listed there.
You can tweak it later but it’s easier to get it as close as possible here first. These would’ve been all of the shows that Automatic would have downloaded for you.
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Once you’re good to go, right click on the “Search-based RSS feed” link at the top of the search results. Select “Copy Link Location” (that’s on Firefox. It will be something similar on another browser.).
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Go back to Automatic and this time when you click the “+” icon, select “Custom…” instead of “TV Show…”
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You’ll get a very intimidating window pane popping up. It looks scary but that’s only because Automatic will let you filter your feed every which way to Sunday. We’re going to do the most basic subscription add that you can do.
In “Description” I’m going to enter the name of the show “BBC Natural World”.
In the Source URL field, I’m going to paste in the URL I copied from ezrss.
If you click “Preview”, you should see all the same entries you saw when you searched on the ezrss.it site.
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Once you’re finished, click “Add” and it will take you back to your subscription list. Your custom subscriptions will be all the way at the bottom.
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The last thing to do is to go back to the General pane and click “Start”. Automatic will do its thing.
If you didn’t move the subscription bar back in time, odds are good that nothing will download because there aren’t any new episodes. You’ll have to wait a couple days but eventually you’ll start to get torrent files added to the folder you told Automatic to save them to.
Lookup Automatic’s Activity
One more thing. If you want to know what Automatic is doing, click on the Activity pane and it will show you a list of current tasks. Automatic is so fast that the majority of time, this pane is empty.
If you’d like to see what Automatic has done in the past, you can click the “Warning” item in the bottom left and change it to “Info”. You’ll see a list appear with notes about what Automatic has previously done.
That’s it for Automatic. As you may be able to tell, I prefer it over ted but then again, ted’s free so you can try him first and switch to Automatic if you have problems.
Transmission Integration (Simple)
This is the simple version of the ted/Automatic/Transmission integration. This works if you’re only downloading one type of media. If you’re downloading more than one type saaaaay TV shows and “pictures of boats”, then you have no other choice than to skip down to the advanced integration section.
Since we’ve set up ted and Automatic in such a way that they won’t mess with your bittorrent client, we need to go into Transmission and tell it to look for the torrent files and download them whenever new ones show up.
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Spotlight “Transmission”
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Open Preferences ,
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Go to the Transfers tab and make sure “Adding” is selected.
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Check the “Watch for torrent files in” box and choose the same directory you selected when you setup ted/Automatic. For me it was the “torrents/television” folder.
Transmission Integration (Advanced)
Using the advanced Transmission integration, you almost have to use Automatic. Automatic lets you set a custom directory where you would like the torrent file saved when you set up a custom subscription. ted does not allow you to do this.
At this point I’ve already explained to you how to set up a custom subscription in Automatic.
When you’re adding your custom feed in Automatic, simply click the area I’ve highlighted below and it will let you choose where to save the torrent files it finds.
If I had a feed for “pictures of boats”, I would have set the directory to “incoming/pictures-of-boats”.
So in my example, we have two directories inside our incoming directory:
-
incoming
- television
- pictures-of-boats
Since Transmission can only watch one directory, we need to go a little further. That’s why we need Hazel.
Hazel’s Salary
Hazel is another closed-source program. It costs $21.95 for the single-user license but comes with a 14-day trial so you can decide if it will work for you.
Hazel Hazah
Hazel is a fantastic program for cleaning up and keeping track of your files. If you want to get an overview of what Hazel does, go here and click the “Video Tour” link.
In a nutshell, Hazel watches any folder you tell her to and performs actions on the files based on rules that you give her. As a quick example, if you put an Excel file in your “Downloads” folder, you can have Hazel automatically put it in a “Spreadsheets” folder for you.
Installation
-
Go here to install Hazel.
-
Click the “Download” link on the right side of the page.
-
Save and open the DMG.
-
Inside the DMG will be a prefpane file. Double-click it. Install for a single user or all users, it doesn’t matter.
-
It will open up the System Preference pane for Hazel and ask you if you’d like to install the sample rules. I chose not to.
-
Hazel is EXTREMELY powerful but for these examples we’re going to be doing something relatively simple. We just want to watch a set of folders and have it open any torrent file that gets dropped there.
-
By default Hazel will install your “Downloads” folder but we don’t care about that right now. Click the “-” icon under the folder list to remove it.
-
You’ll be asked to confirm your choice. Click “Remove”.
-
Finally it will ask you whether you want to transfer the rules that were on that folder over to another folder. You don’t, so click “Cancel”.
Adding a Torrent Source
-
To add a folder for your torrents, click on the “+” beneath the folder list.
-
Select the folder you want to start tracking. For the first one we’ll set the “television” folder where we told Automatic to drop its torrent files.
-
We’re going to make sure we don’t have duplicates (which should never happen anyway) but it can’t hurt to check the box.
-
By default nothing happens even after you add a folder. We have to tell Hazel which files to look at and what to do with them. Click the “+” icon under the “Rules” list.
-
You’ll get a popup with tons of options for setting up a new rule. It’s kinda scary (like the custom subscription we looked at in Automatic) but again, it’s all about power. Hazel is VERY powerful.
-
For this rule though we’re going to be very simplistic. In the Description you can put whatever you’d like. Under Conditions, we only need one; We only want Hazel to work with files with an extension of “torrent”.
-
Under the actions section, we want to select “Open file”. When we do that, we’ll get another option to specify which application we want to use to open the file. “Default Application” should be fine but better safe than sorry. Click it and choose “Other…”
-
You’ll see a list of your Applications. Just press play… I mean… choose Transmission. And click “Open”
-
Click “OK” and you’re all done! Hazel will do her magic in the background and you won’t have to touch it.
Repeat these steps for each torrent folder you want to track.
Have Hazel Manage Your Trash
Since we’re going to be downloading and deleting all these files, and we want our media center AUTOMATED dang it! We’ll just have Hazel make sure that the Trash gets emptied on a regular basis.
Customize Hazel
Okay, now it’s the time of truth. I’ve put together a little screencast so you can take a look at what your process is going to look like. Note that you won’t have to have any of these windows open normally. I have them open here simply for demonstration purposes.
PS: If you have a problem viewing this in your browser, try opening this url in Quicktime: http://www.thekompanee.com/videos/automatic-transmission-and-hazel.mov
Ok, so you’re going to be spending a WHOLE lotta time on this. You’re also going to be making sure that your media collection is in pristine condition. With such a big time commitment, you’re going to want to make sure that your media is safe. So first thing’s first. Where’s “there”? You have a few options.
Option #0 - I Spent All My Money On A Mac
If you’re pretty broke, your only option might be to use the hard drive your papa gave ya (Papa Steve that is). If that’s the case, I completely understand and we’ll make due with what we have.
Just know that this is VERY far from ideal. Buuuuut you probably already know this. I would suggest you look at the other options just so you know why.
Option #1 - Look Ma! No Hands!
If you want to go this route, you can grab yourself an external enclosure and a big ass hard drive and connect it to your computer via Firewire (or USB if you’re not going to stream HD video) and you should be good to go.
Of course if the hard drive goes out, more than likely you’ll lose everything.
I did this for a while when I was in college and I couldn’t afford anything better. Of course back then, a $200 NAS wasn’t available. Which leads me to Option #2.
Option #2 - He Huffed and He Puffed
As a middle ground, you can get something like this. If you get it, you’ll be able to buy ONE or TWO big ass hard drives.
Getting one drive will put you in the same spot as Option #1 but once you save up enough money to get another identical drive, you can put it in the enclosure and configure it to give you RAID 1 (also known as mirrored redundancy).
What does this mean for you? Well, kind sir or madam, it means that if EITHER ONE of those disks dies, you will lose NO data. It will give you time to RMA or replace the defective drive. Once you get the new drive, you simply place it in the (now vacant) slot and after a few hours of hard copying, you’ll be safe once again!
What’s RAID?
RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”
It basically means that if you have multiple disks installed, one (or sometimes two) of them can fail without losing any data. In fact, the system will continue to function exactly as before (albeit a bit slower).
RAID comes in many flavors all the way from RAID 0 through RAID 53 (Not all numbers are used :).
If you’re interested in learning more about RAID, you can start by looking at Wikipedia’s RAID article.
Not only do you get the benefit of redundancy, but a Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit like the one I linked to gives you many more benefits. If you have the money, I highly recommend it.
If you need more storage than a 2-bay NAS can offer, you can expand all the way up to 8-bays before you enter “Enterprise” territory. Of course an 8-bay NAS would mean you’d have 14TB of storage available (7 * 2TB = 14TB - The other 2TB is saved for backup) and that’s a LOT of space!
NAS units are fantastic. It’s what I use myself. It’s only weakness? The Big Bad Wolf. If your house burns down or blows away, you’re SOL.
What’s a NAS?
A NAS (or Network Attached Storage) unit is basically a small computer attached to your network. Typically it has no keyboard, mouse or monitor attached because the NAS is not meant to be used like a typical desktop computer. The majority of the time you’ll access a NAS simply by using it as a networked share (or shares).
If you need to configure your NAS, almost all brands come with a web interface that you can access with a browser from any computer on your network.
Option #3 - Angels on the Head of a Pin
This is the high-end. If you do this, you have more money than you know what to do with or you’re a business (in which case I’m not sure why you’re reading this.) and so I’m gonna keep this short and sweet.
Cloud storage has come a long way in the last few years. From Amazon S3 to Rackspace’s Cloud Files, connecting yourself to the cloud and having your files automatically sync is easier than ever.
If you decide to get a network storage (NAS) solution, almost all of them have a simple admin switch to enable syncing your data to the cloud.
Battle In Cloud City
“The Cloud” is just another term for “The Internet”. Anytime anyone says “It’s in the cloud”, they mean their information is accessible anywhere they have an internet connection. As an example, your Facebook profile is “in the cloud”.
Folder Layout
Once you have your storage solution lined up, you need to prepare it. If you bought a NAS, you probably already have a “Downloads” directory and a “Media” or “Multimedia” directory, but just for good measure I’ll spell it out for you. We need these folders at a minimum:
Note: I added “pictures-of-boats” and “files-from-friends” just to indicate that you can put whatever other folders you’d like depending on what you’re planning on needing.
Downloads Folder
This is where all the files will initially go when they’re downloaded. Think of each top-level folder as a kind of “stage”. Each of your downloads will need to pass through each stage before they’re “archived”.
- incoming
- television
- movies
- pictures-of-boats
- files-from-friends
- unsorted
- television
- movies
- pictures-of-boats
- files-from-friends
- sorted
- television
- movies
- pictures-of-boats
- files-from-friends
- problems
- television
- movies
- pictures-of-boats
- files-from-friends
- trash
- television
- movies
- pictures-of-boats
- files-from-friends
Here’s what each top-level folder means:
- incoming: is where files go as soon as they’re being downloaded. This place is like a raw wasteland full of unscrupulous filenames.
- unsorted: is where files go once they’ve been slightly cleaned up and extra junk files have been deleted
- sorted: is where files go once they’ve been scraped for data. If they’re in here it means they should be squeaky clean and ready for archiving.
- problems: is where files go if, at any point in the organization process, there’s a problem. Only files that require manual attention should live here.
- trash: our system will make it a point to not delete any files automatically unless they’ve been there over 2 weeks. This is where they live until that time limit is up.
Multimedia Archive Folder
Once files are scraped and verified, they’ll be moved here to our home of pristine media awesomeness.
- television
- movies
- music
- games
- books
- audiobooks
- educational
- home-movies
- personal-photos
- family-photos
Summary
Today was a little text-heavy and I apologize. There’s just not a lot of ways to make this topic sexy… (except with sex and I’m trying to keep this guide family friendly) but after today, I expect that you have selected one of the above options and have it connected, setup and ready to roll.
I plan in the future to do a guide on setting up a NAS unit but I’m going to try to finish one guide at a time.
Tomorrow we’ll look into how we’re going to organize our media to create the best, most automated solution possible.
There are a few things we need to install that are a little more “technocratic” than the other stuff we’ll be doing. Don’t worry, it’ll make your life easier in the long run and I’ll walk you through every step.
Writing to Windows (NTFS) Drives
Have a Windows computer somewhere else in your house? It could be that you have an external USB key or external HD that’s written in a Windows format.
By default, Macs can READ this information but they can’t CHANGE this information and that makes it a real pain if you have files you want to add, change or delete while it’s connected to your Mac.
Skippy Skipworth
If you DON’T want or need to be able to write to a Windows formatted drive, you can safely skip this section.
MacFUSE
The “FUSE” in MacFUSE stands for “File-system in USErspace” in case you’re curious. You probably weren’t. In any event, it needs to be installed first before you can do any other NTFS goodness.
-
Go to Softpedia to get it.
-
Click the Download button
-
Click the “Softpedia Secure Download” link
-
Save and open the DMG
-
Run the Package file to install MacFUSE
-
Click “Continue” and “Next” a bunch of times
-
Open System Preferences
-
Verify that you now have a “MacFUSE” item listed at the bottom.
NTFS-3G
-
Go to: Softpedia to get this one as well.
-
Click the Download button
-
Click the “Softpedia Secure Download” link (either one)
-
Save and open the DMG
-
Run the Package file to install NTFS-3G
-
Lots of “Continue” and “Accept” clicking until you get to this:
At this point you have a couple of options. Here’s the deal, you know how sometimes when you have a drive or device attached to your computer and you’re ready to disconnect it, you just pull the plug out? And then the computer pops up a message saying: “HEY! What’d’ya do THAT for!? You need to TELL me you’re removing the device before you actually DO it!”?
Well if you choose option #2 on this screen and you remove a Windows formatted drive without telling the Mac that you’re removing it, it’ll almost certainly mess up your drive. If you choose option #1, it MIGHT mess up your drive but odds are good that it won’t. Since we’re using this for the purposes of connecting an external drive, I would recommend the “No caching” option.
- Restart your computer once the installation finishes
Installing Xcode
Xcode is a suite of developer tools that Apple packages separately from the rest of OS X. Out of the 3-5GB installation, you’ll probably be using about 100MB of it.
But in true Apple fashion you’re not allowed to customize what you’d like to install when you install Apple’s developer suite. This means the space we saved earlier when we reinstalled Snow Leopard, we’re going to have to use up now so that we can install the entire Xcode suite.
Let’s DO IT!
-
Insert your Snow Leopard disc or open it if it’s already in there.
-
Click on Optional Installs
-
Open the Xcode Package
-
You know the drill by now. Click “Continue” and “Agree” until you come to this:
-
Click “Change Install Location…” and you should see this:
-
Mimic my settings
Make yours look like the image above. No matter what’s checked, all you need to have checked is “Essentials” and “UNIX Development”
- You’re home free now. Just click “Continue” until it starts installing. (You’ll probably have to enter your password at some point.)
While it’s installing, watch some humerous video game clips.
Ding!
Ok now once you’re finished with THAT load of doody, the next thing to do is install MacPorts.
Installing MacPorts
MacPorts is a software installer for the Mac. Basically, you tell it what you want to install and it takes care of everything else in the background. Think of it like the when you drag a new application into the Applications folder replacing the fancy graphics:
with a lot of text:
dionysus:skin dionysus$ git clone git://github.com/temmi2000/aeon.git Aeon65
Cloning into Aeon65…
remote: Counting objects: 9906, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (5835/5835), done.
remote: Total 9906 (delta 4957), reused 8239 (delta 3700)
Receiving objects: 100% (9906/9906), 462.71 MiB | 1.50 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (4957/4957), done.
Fortunately for you, the easiest way to install MacPorts itself is using good-ole point and click.
-
Click here to get the file you need to install MacPorts
If the above link doesn’t work, go here and find the Snow Leopard DMG link.
- Save the DMG
- Open the DMG
- Drop the application onto the Applications folder
-
Open up the DMG
-
Run through the installer
Nothing crazy, just accept the defaults and click “Continue” or “Agree” whenever necessary. Once it’s done, we’re going to open up Terminal. Don’t be scared.
Training Wheels Off - Part 1
At this point you should be familiar with downloading a DMG, opening it and running the included package file. I’m going to spare you the bandwidth from now on and just assume you can both drag and drop the application to the Applications folder and run a package installer (or dropping the application onto the Applications folder).
So from now on, instead of specifying:
I will simply say “Save and open the DMG”
These steps will be the same for almost every application we install. Don’t worry, if it differs, I’ll let you know.
-
Open Spotlight
-
Type terminal
-
You’re going to get a window that will come up and it will have text similar to the following:
Last login: Fri Sept 7 22:20:58 on ttys002
dionysus:~ dionysus$
-
After the “$” type:
which port
-
You should get a line back that says something like:
/opt/local/bin/port
Troubleshooting
If you don’t get back the expected output, then most likely something went wrong with the installation. What probably happened is that you typed which port and you didn’t get anything back.
At this point it’s time for some troubleshooting which is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Sorry. :( Go find your favorite geek to give you a hand. It’s probably something simple.
Bang A Gong (Git It On)
Assuming everything went peachy, we can now install Git. Don’t worry about what Git is; just know that it’s a much simpler way to keep a bunch of your stuff up to date.
port search git-core
If you get anything back that looks even remotely correct such as:
git-core @1.7.1.1 (devel)
A fast version control system
Then feel free to continue.
sudo port install git-core +svn+bash_completion
Now you can sit back and relax. MacPorts is going to do its magic and you don’t have to do anything. You can feel free to watch all the meaningless text or you can go here.
Better Browsers
If you’re going to be doing a fair bit of web browsing on your media center, I would suggest upgrading your browser to something that you can actually customize and that’s also open source.
I prefer Firefox but either one of these browsers rocks. If you’re a casual user I would select Chrome. If you’re a moderate to uber-geek, I would choose Firefox.
Firefox
Standards Compliant:
Page Speed:
Resource Usage:
Open Source:
Customizability:
Chrome
Standards Compliant:
Page Speed:
Resource Usage:
Open Source:
Customizability:
The Unarchiver
The default archive utility that comes with the Mac is about as useful as the default archive utility that comes with Windows. If we were on Windows, we’d download WinRAR. Since we’re on a Mac, however we’re going to download its equivalent: The Unarchiver.
-
Go here and click the “Download” button.
-
Open the zip
When it asks you what you’d like to do, instead of selecting “Save File”, tell it to open with Archive Utility
-
Open up your Downloads folder.
-
Take the extracted file and drag it to your Applications folder.
-
Open Spotlight
-
Type unarchiver
Training Wheels Off - Part 2
This is the last time I’m going to go through the steps:
-
Open Spotlight
-
Type “Application Name”
From now on I’m just going to say:
-
Spotlight “Application Name”
-
Click “Select all”
This first preferences screen will ask you what types of compressions you would like Unarchiver to handle for you.
-
Mimic my settings
On the next tab, “Extraction”, set yours as I have set mine.
-
Nothing should need to be changed on the “Advanced” tab.
Summary
Today we took a gander at the applications you’ll need to support the rest of the stuff we’re going to be installing later. I know, I know, you don’t care much about this stuff but trust me, you’ve made an investment that’s going to pay off later.
Tomorrow we’re going to begin looking at how we want to organize our media. This is going to be a precursor to actually getting your media to automatically download to your system.
Ok folks, I’m going to apologize before you even get started today because I know that it’s going to be extremely dry. Dry like eating a sleeve of Saltine crackers in the desert at high noon on the summer solstice while sitting next to a dehumidifier.
But trust me when I tell you that these things are either going to eventually cause some sort of “Wow” factor OR they’re necessary for security purposes.
System Settings
Resolution
For your final media server experience, you’re going to want the highest resolution your server and display can both handle. For the purposes of setting up the server however you won’t want anything higher than a vertical resolution of 720 pixels.
To set your resolution, perform the following steps:
-
Open up Spotlight
-
Type displays
At this point you should see the listing of resolutions available to you such as the following:
If you’re using an HDMI cable, you will not only see the typical resolutions such as “800 x 600” but will also see the HD resolutions: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i. If you see these then you’re probably going to want to pick one of them. If none of those work, or you’re not using HDMI, use one of the standard resolutions.
Getting Your Maximum Resolution
If you’re not sure what you’re doing, don’t be afraid to try different resolutions. If the Mac thinks there might be something wrong, it will wait about 15 seconds and then switch back to the last resolution that was working.
Screen Sharing Benefit
If you’re using Screen Sharing, then it doesn’t matter what resolution you pick. The television might blank out but Screen Sharing will always be available, allowing you to simply select a different resolution.
Once you’ve got your maximum resolution, mark it down somewhere for later reference.
Getting Your Maximum Screen Sharing Resolution
If you’re going to be using Screen Sharing, you are going to want to make sure you have a good response experience. After all, we’re going to be at this for a while. So, play around and select a lower resolution. Drag windows around and do things that cause large portions of the screen to change. There should be SOME to NO lag. If the lag causes it to be uncomfortable to do things on the system, you should try a lower resolution. Response is more important than screen space at this point.
Once you find a resolution you’re happy with, you’re set and it’s on to the next step.
Troubleshooting
Underscan
If you’re using HDMI, you might notice that either some of the screen is cut off or that the image doesn’t fill the full screen. You can fix this by adjusting the underscan slider that you’ll see on the Resolution page.
You’ll notice that moving it will make the screen image larger or smaller. By adjusting it, you should be able to get the perfect size for your television.
Background and Desktop
Obviously since you’re going to be using this as a media center, this is one time when you actually want as many of the bells and whistles as possible.
Desktop
For one, since you’re going to be accessing your data 90% of the time through your media applications, you don’t want a bunch of icons cluttering your desktop. To fix this, let’s switch to the Finder and go into the preferences
Under the “Show these items on the desktop” header, uncheck all the boxes.
Wallpapers
Next, we need to make sure that there’s a really good selection of desktop wallpaper on the system to use. I prefer unobtrusive vista-like (not Windows Vista :) scenes. I’ve gathered together a bunch of free backgrounds from various sites and made them available here.
In order to rotate our wallpapers we’re going to download a nifty little app called Wally which will let you not only rotate the wallpapers on your system but also allows you to grab photos from Bing , SmugMug , Picasa , Flickr , Photobucket , Buzznet and more.
Install Wally
-
Go to the Wally Product Page
-
Download the MacOSX Image
-
Open the Image
-
Click “Allow” to tell OS X that you know you downloaded it from the internet.
Downloaded Software Warning
This annoying popup will be a reoccurring nuisance throughout this guide. I’m not going to call it out every time, just click “Allow” to make it go away.
-
Walk through the installer’s steps (defaults are fine)
Initial Configuration
Personal Preference
This set of steps is completely up to you but it should give you an idea of how to set the settings and sources you’d like.
Settings
For the initial settings work, here is what I set and why:
-
Position: Scaled
Along with the “Use only landscape-oriented photos”, this setting keeps you from having any area not covered by wallpaper.
-
Choose in random order
When it comes to folders on your computer and search terms which don’t have frequent updates, each time you restart Wally you’ll tend to get the same backgrounds. This fixes that problem.
-
Play automatically on application start
As soon as Wally starts, it will begin to play backgrounds.
-
Switch Background On Play
As soon as Wally begins playing backgrounds, it will switch out your current background.
-
Use only landscape-oriented photos
Reads size info and only loads backgrounds where the width is greater than the height.
-
Rotate images according to EXIF information
Will make sure that if an image was only rotated “virtually”, then it will be in the correct orientation when viewing.
-
Use full desktop area
Self-explanatory
-
Photo has to be bigger than desktop’s size
Because I don’t like fuzzy/pixelated background images.
Sources
To start, we’re going to use the “Folder” source.
-
Click the “Add Folder” button on the righthand side of the screen.
-
Select a folder for Wally to look for wallpapers.
For me I’m going to set this as the folder on my NAS share instead of the media server’s hard disk. I’m doing this because I want to make sure everything is synced, backed up and shared. The easiest way to do this is to make all of my data live on my NAS.
Although “Folder” sources are the easiest. “Flickr” sources are also very easy. Unfortunately they might not have all the options you’d expect.
For instance, Flickr has the ability to create groups that people can submit images to. As an example, there’s a VERY nice “Wallpaper” group but Wally can’t currently access it. Instead you have to settle for a search for wallpaper which yields far less exciting results.
For sources other than “Folder” you also have the option of saving all downloaded images to a specific folder. This can be done on a PER SEARCH basis.
Again, I store these on my NAS so that they can be shared amongst all of my systems.
Picasa sources are almost identical to Flickr sources. This is how I set mine up:
Energy
For a media center, your energy settings are going to be extremely important. For one, you want to be able to access you media center fast and at any time you want. For another, you want any of your systems to be able to access it (locally or remotely) any time you want. But lastly, you also are only going to be using it a few hours a day on average so you don’t want it adding to your power bill when it’s not doing anything.
Luckily, the system we’re using (the Mac Mini) is already highly energy efficient. {:href => “http://antenn-aid.com/”} iPhone 4 aside , Apple makes great hardware. But we can always improve. Go into your energy settings.
-
Open Spotlight
-
Type energy
These are the defaults for the Mac Mini and they’re pretty good. I would say if you have an LCD or Plasma, go ahead and turn the “Display Sleep” setting down to about 5 minutes. I’ve found putting “Computer Sleep” to around 10 minutes to be a decent amount of time. Adjust these according to your own needs.
LCD / Plasma Note
If you have an LCD or Plasma screen and you’re concerned about burn-in, make certain that your television displays something non-static when it loses signal with the media server. If it simply displays a static graphic, you’re going to be better off setting both the “Display Sleep” and “Computer Sleep” up to about 20 minutes. Then set the Screen Saver to start after 2 or 3 minutes. This will give you 2-3 minutes of a static image, followed by 17 minutes of a dynamic image and then the media server will finally disconnect the signal and your television will display its default “I can’t find a signal.” imagery.
Computer Sleep
Even though we want to be energy efficient, we can’t have the media server going to sleep because it needs to always be ready to download any new media that becomes available.
Slide the top “Computer Sleep” slider to “Never”
Wake On Network Access
Basically this lets you enjoy the benefits of an aggressive sleep routine and still allow access to the media server at any time.
Did You Clean House?
If you didn’t follow us through on the format and restore step at the beginning, you might have unchecked “Wake for network access” at some point. This is an option that must be checked.
Go ahead and try it:
-
Put the media server to sleep
-
Close Screen Sharing
-
Verify it’s asleep by making sure the light is fading in and out.
-
Start Screen Sharing again
The media server should have woken up, and you should now have your media server’s desktop back up in front of you.
Remote Screen Sharing
If you want to be able to wake your systems up while you’re away from home, it’s going to require a bit more configuring than what we’ve done here thus far. Trust me, I will be including it in this guide but we’re going to slowly build up to it.
Auto-Login
Since this is a media server, we’re going to set it up without much in the way of security permissions. It’s going to be a pretty open system. Once we’re finished it won’t be able to get to anything we care about being publicly available. The reason we’re doing this is so we can make it more of an “appliance” rather than a “computer”.
In other words, turn it on and it’s on. No usernames, passwords, or logins of any kind. As little waiting as possible.
Did You Clean House?
The default is that this setting is enabled. If you formatted your system or you never changed it, you can skip this step.
-
Open Spotlight
-
Type accounts
-
Click the padlock in the lower left if it’s currently locked and type in your password.
-
Click the “Login Options” area
-
Select the user to login as from the dropdown
Look at the item entitled “Automatic login”. If it’s set to the user you’re currently logged in as, then you’re good to go. If it’s not, click the dropdown box and select the user you would like to automatically log in as when the computer starts.
-
Close System Preferences
DVD and CD Options
Since we’re going to be using our (yet-to-be-installed) media applications for CDs and DVDs, we’re going to disable all of the “Hey I see you inserted a DVD so I’m going to do ‘x’” functionality that is built in to OS X.
Enable Firewall
You’re mainly going to be accessing this bad boy from your local network, however, we are going to be opening it up to the outside world. Since bad guys are out there. It doesn’t hurt to enable the Mac’s firewall just in case.
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Open Spotlight
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Type security
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Click the padlock in the lower left if it’s currently locked and type in your password.
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Click the “Firewall” tab at the top
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Click “Start”
Preferences Hoopla
At this point, look through all of the other preferences and customize your system how you’d like. Come on back when you’re done. I’ll still be here.
Safety note, if you don’t know what something does then Google for it first. If you don’t want to take the time to Google for it, LEAVE IT ALONE!
Summary
Well that’s it for today ladies and gentlemen. We got our media server beginning to look presentable. Tweaked some of the important settings and did a little bit to secure it.
Next up is System Applications. It’s a short one and then it’ll be time for some serious media server work.
So I had a my Mac Media Center of DOOM series set to auto post once per week and evidently Tumblr’s Autoposting sucks because it deleted them all.
Because I’ve made everyone wait so long, I’ll post two parts of the guide today instead of just one. :)
Hope you enjoy.
Configure The Easy Way (Remotely)
Let’s face it, if you’ve got a setup where the Mac Mini is going to be connected to the television, one or more of these things is likely the case:
- You’re squinting at the small type on the screen.
- You’ve got the media server connected to something other than the screen it’ll be hooked up to when you’re finished.
- You’re reading this blog entry on your laptop/desktop computer.
- You’re sitting back on the couch using a bluetooth keyboard/mouse.
- You’re sitting too close to the screen and it’s uncomfortable.
You have a problem. It’s easier to work on your laptop/desktop, but at the same time, you want to see what the results look like on the television.
Let’s fix that problem.
Screen Sharing
On the Media Server
Enable VNC
If you’re on a Windows machine you’ll have to click the “Computer Settings” button to enable VNC.
Check the second checkbox and type in a password.
Then, install a VNC client on your Windows machine in order to connect.
Note: Remember the username and password of the user you use to log into the media server with.
On Your Mac Workstation
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Open Finder
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Click the name of the media server in the “Sharing” list.
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Click the item that says “Share Screen” in the upper right.
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Choose “As a registered user” when it asks you how you’d like to connect.
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In the prompt, type the username and password of the user you created when you installed Snow Leopard on the media server.
You should now be seeing the same thing on your workstation as is shown on your television (albeit probably at a slightly lower quality).
A few things to note when using Screen Sharing:
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You can’t press
to get out of the application since the keystroke is sent to the other machine. You must use your mouse and click to another application on your computer to switch.
- You can utilize the clipboard and copy things to and from the media server. Just use the Edit menu and the “Get Clipboard” and “Send Clipboard” commands.
Now you get the best of both worlds. Time to really get rockin’!
Troubleshooting
Lag
If you get a bunch of lag, first, make sure that Screen Sharing’s “Adaptive Quality” is turned on. This is under the “View” menu. Second, try reducing the resolution to 720p for the time being. The fewer pixels that have to be transmitted over the network, the faster the response time will be. You can move it back up to 1080p when the heavy lifting is done.
No Response
If you’re not getting any response at all, it’s possible that your router is blocking Bonjour’s ports.
Screen Sharing Ports
The ports that need to be open include 3283 using both UDP and TCP as well as 5900 using TCP.
Summary
Today we took a look at getting Screen Sharing setup on your media server. If you’re looking for ease of setup, this is going to be invaluable to you.
Next stop is System Preferences land. Which I’m going to tell you is a little dry. But necessary in order to get the full ‘make-them-drool’ effect you’re going to want when you show it off.
Clean Install
I love starting a project with a clean installation. Here’s how to do it.
A special thanks to Michael Flux for these awesome screenshots.
He made a walkthrough for the installation of the beta of Snow Leopard and the screens are almost identical to the final. He saved me from having to go back through and take photos of all the screens. Thanks Michael.
Ok so Apple makes great (albeit overpriced) hardware. Unfortunately their software falls short fast. Apple designs their software for the 80% of their users who are just your regular Joe the Plumbers. I don’t want you to be Joe. I want to turn you into “Andrew/Andrea God(dess) of Computer Awesomeness”.
Apple software has its initial “oooohhhh” appeal but that’s about it. (The exceptions are their “Pro” and Aperture line). So if you’re a long-time Mac user; if you think Mail is “just fine”; then I challenge you to broaden your horizons. Let this guide get you on your way.
I don’t hate Apple. I own an iPhone, a Mac Mini, two MacBook Pros and an Airport Extreme. They’ve come a long way back into the light of innovation but they’re forgetting that the thing that brought them here was a solid product and a loyal following of developers. Not even their OS would be worth anything without the open source UNIX shell underneath their polished user interface (anyone remember OS 9? *shudders*).
They’ve recently taken a big poo, not only on their lifeblood (that would be the developers. Who’s the last person you knew who bought and iPhone for the PHONE?) but also on their LEGIONS of UNBELIEVABLE fans.
So now we’re going to end up with a pristine system and at the same time, remove all of the extra iLife software, printer drivers, language packs, etc. This will save us about 1GB off of the final install size. Not that we need to save the space but I don’t want anything extra on my system if I can help it. And I can.
This Mac Mini is new so the easiest way for me to get rid of all of this stuff is to do a fresh Snow Leopard install. If you’ve got a computer that you only wish to use as a media server, I would do this regardless. A fresh system is a happy system.
Booting to the DVD with only a Bluetooth Keyboard
A note on booting to the DVD with only a Bluetooth Keyboard. You can’t do it. In order to boot to the optical drive you must press “C” at the same moment as the Apple chime when the computer boots. The problem is that the keyboard doesn’t pair until you see the login window/desktop.
The solution only works if you have a copy of OS X already on the system (which you should). Go into “System Preferences” and find the “Startup Disk” item. From here you can select the optical drive and reboot the system. This will do exactly what you want.
Clearing the Hard Disk
This process will completely remove everything from your system. Nothing will be backed up. If you’re certain you want to do this then keep going. If there are files you need to get off of your system and you’re not sure how to do it properly, then you can do some Google searching or talk to your favorite geek about giving you a hand.
Once the computer boots up and it runs the boot loader for the installer, you’re going to see a language menu. Select your preference and continue.
Now that you’re finally to the installation screen:
you don’t want to click “Install” just yet. Instead you want to click the Utilities menu at the top and select Disk Utility. It’s take a second to pop up, but once it does, you’ll see a list of drives off to your left. The one you want will almost always be at the top. Here’s what mine looks like:
What you want to do is select the top drive itself (not one of the indented items) and then in the panel on the right select the “Partition” tab.
In the screen that comes up, you’re going to see a dropdown that says “Current”. You want to change this to “1 Partition”.
Finally, click the “Apply” button in the lower right corner. Accept the confirmation and let it roll.
Once complete, click the close button to get rid of the Disk Utility and the installer should come back up.
Deselecting Optional Components
When reinstalling OS X you don’t have to worry about not installing iLife (it’s on another disc) but there are other optional components you should deselect. You do this by clicking the “Customize” button in the bottom lefthand corner of the drive selections screen when it comes up.
At the Customize screen, you’re going to do the following:
- Expand the “Printer Support” item and make sure that only “Printers Used by This Mac” and “Nearby and Popular Printers” is checked. This will make sure that you’ll have all of the printer drivers you need and none that you don’t.
- Uncheck “Additional Fonts”. Unless you speak something other than English.
- Uncheck “Language Translations” unless you speak something other than English. In which case you you should expand this item and select only the language you want.
- Check Rosetta
- Click “OK”
Selecting Your Install Disk
Back at the installation screen, you’re going to select the disk you want to install to. If you don’t have an external drive connected you should only have one option. Click it and then click “Install”.
Now all you have to do is sit back and relax.
You can watch some of these while you wait.
Finish Him
Welcome
Today you’re going to be making a shopping list. Most of these things I’m assuming you already have or else you wouldn’t be reading this guide. For example if you’re planning on buying a Mac just because you saw this, then you probably have WAAAAY too much money. You should probably give me some. After all, I spent a lot of time on this guide. My hourly rate is usually $4,912 so at 52 hours, I’d say you should send me $255,424.
Ingredients for Your Media Server Recipe… OF DOOOOOOO… Ok, that’s gonna get really old.
This is what you’ll need to go through our entire guide. Parse as necessary.
Media Server Only
If you only want to use your media server while you’re at your house/dorm then everything you’ll need is included in this list.
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A Mac
We’ll be working with Snow Leopard but Leopard should work with only minor tweaks.
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The Appropriate Cables and Adapters
This assumes your television has an HDMI port. Adjust your needs accordingly.
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For MacBook Pros with DVI Ports
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For MacBook Pros or Mac Minis with Mini DisplayPorts
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For Mac Minis with HDMI Ports
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I Got Your Display Port Right Here
Do you know how to tell what kind of a display port you have?
HDMI Cable Scams
Need to buy an HDMI cable? Read here for why expensive HDMI cables are a ripoff.
Add In External Access
If you want to access your media server from outside your home/dorm then you’ll need a few additional things.
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A Domain
Ours is through GoDaddy and that’s where the screenshots will be from. Don’t worry, this is a pretty good guide. Although it’s slightly out of date, it should be enough to get you through.
GoDaddy’s website is horrible and they’ll try to spam you as well as try to convince you that you need “extras” which are NOT necessary. If you buy a .com domain name for 1 year and pay more than $8, it’s too much.
And don‚Äôt forget - never pay full price for a GoDaddy domain name. A quick search for ‚ÄúGoDaddy Promo Codes‚Äù will give you a long list to try. Here’s one to get you going.
Total DNS Control
Any domain service that gives you control over your DNS records will work.
I Don’t “No” Squat About DNS
Think of a domain name like a pneumonic. A pneumonic helps you remember. “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nectarines” is a pneumonic to remember the planets: “Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune”. Sorry Pluto, you’re OUT!
A domain name is an easy way to remember an internet address. When you type a domain name, a service called DNS (Domain Name Service) turns it into an address that the machines on the internet can understand.
For example, when you type inwww.google.com, DNS turns it into 74.125.67.103. I think you’d agree “www.google.com” is easier to remember.
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A Router
- Must have the ability to do what’s called Network Address Translation or NAT for short. If it’s a recent router from Linksys, D-Link or 3COM, you should be fine.
Network Address Translation (NAT)
NAT was created around the early 90’s because people were realizing that the internet was becoming more popular than anticipated and all of the addresses were being used up too quickly.
(What exactly is an internet address? That’s a discussion for another time. Just trust me that as you read this article right now, you have one.)
Think about it like this: when you’re living in an apartment, there is only one address: “555 Ecalpon Drive”, but you append an extra little piece of information onto the address to tell people how to deliver mail to you: “555 Ecalpon Drive - Apartment 5”
That is very similar to the way that NAT works. No matter how many computers you have in your house, there is only one public address, but your router can add a little extra piece of information that lets other computers know how to deliver information to a specific computer in your house.
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Wireless-N
If Wireless-N sounds like the name of that lead singer that knocked up your sister, just make sure the router box says something like “802.11n” or “802.11 g/n”. And if all else fails, ask one of the salespeople. Tell them you need a router that is “Dual Band Wireless-N”.
Wireless-N Performance
If you‚Äôre planning on streaming HD from your NAS, you‚Äôre going to need a router that has Wireless-N (preferably dual-band). You might also want to run a wireless network analyzer to make sure there’s not too high of a signal to noise ratio.
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Dynamic DNS
This is not necessary but EXTREMELY nice to have. We can work around it so don’t buy a new router if yours doesn’t do this.
My Router
For this guide I’ll be using an Airport Extreme. (Incidentally, the Airport Extreme does NOT do Dynamic DNS. You’d think for $180 Apple could have included it in the software. No such luck. *sigh*)
Optimus Prime Time
If you want to get the most out of your media center and if your budget allows, you should try to snag:
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An HD Television
If you’re currently not using an HD television, then you’re really missing out. You should try to beg, borrow or steal one.
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A Network Attached Storage Solution
One of the following will do you just fine. They all have their pluses and minuses so do your research and Google for some guides.
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An Android or iPhone
Remotes are an extra cost and a pain to set up. And, in the case of Apple’s remote, lacking in features (especially for the $30 price tag). A smartphone will give you infinitely more capabilities and the apps generally run between $0 and $1. Oh and did I mention that your smartphone can do things your regular remote never even thought about being able to do? Well just you wait. :)
Unbiased
The guide will include help setting up both an iPhone AND an Android phone.
And with that, let’s get on with the show. :)
Summary
Today you had the opportunity to pick and choose which parts of the guide you’d like to take part in and decide which pieces you would like to purchase.
Tomorrow we’ll get started with our media server experience by cleaning off our Mac and making it lean and mean.
AgileZen. We Love It.
We use AgileZen for keeping track of all of our projects and giving our clients a real-time view into how much stuff is getting done, whether or not we’re on-track and also gives them an easy way to track attachments and communications.
Stories: Not Just For Bedtime Anymore
We use Stories to keep track of what the things are that the customer wants.
Why do we do it like this? Because the end result is all the customer typically cares about. HOW we do things is the reason the client is paying us.
A typical User Story might be “As a User who is logged in to the system, I should be able to create a new Article.”
Another User Story might be “As a Visitor to the website I should be able to see XYZ Company’s contact information.”
Open Sesame
The first step that happened which you didn’t see, was that someone from The Kompanee told the system to let you into a project. From our end, it looks something like this:
When we fire this off, the person whose email address we typed in will get an email saying “Welcome to AgileZen!!”
Open this email up and you should see a link that you need to click on which will tell AgileZen “I’m the person who should have access to this project. Let me in!”
Clicking on this link will bring you to a page that will give you the ability to create a new user account.
Once you click on “New User”, you’ll finally be at the screen where you’ll enter in all your ugly (or pretty… like daffodils) details so that you can get back into AgileZen when you leave. You do have a life right?
Go ahead and click on the “Sign up and join” button. After AgileZen thinks a little bit, you’ll hopefully get a “Hey, You Typed Your Name Correctly! Yay You!” message.
Logging In
Now that you have an account, it’s all sunshine and rainbows. Let’s log in.
Go to the AgileZen login page. and type in the username and password you set up in the previous step.
When you click “Log in”, you should see your user Dashboard. The projects that you have access to will be over on the right. If you don’t have a “full” AgileZen account, you’ll also have that option presented to you. We’re not going to touch on full accounts in this blog post.
Clicking on a particular project brings you to the “Project Wall” where you’ll have various lanes. These lanes are where the User Stories live. In this screenshot, we don’t have any User Stories but I recommend clicking on the hints at the bottom of the screen to become more familiar with what AgileZen is capable of.
And Then There Was More…
Now that you’re in, I’d recommend checking out the tour on the AgileZen website.
There are lots of little gems in there which will give a you much better context in how we use the system.
Summary
Excellent, now you’re all set up on AgileZen. Time for us to get to work for you. If you have any questions, hit us up at questions@thekompanee.com and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
We’ve found that AgileZen lets us give our customers the most value for their money and we hope you agree. If you don’t, there’s going to be a discussion about it when we have our “Party at the Moon Tower”. We hope you’ll join us there.
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Summary
I have a strong ability to relate technical terminology to the business users and vice versa.
