9 thoughts on “Mac Power Users 126: The Mac Home Server”

1. Dr G February 26, 2013 at 3:20 am

   Great episode. iDentify seems to be exactly whats missing in my workflow. I think you missed ripit in the shownotes though: http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/
2. ToddG February 26, 2013 at 10:16 pm

   Need a shownote to SpamSieve!
3. Donald Burr February 27, 2013 at 7:41 pm

   As lawyers I am surprised that you did not mention that the process of ripping DVDs and Blu-rays is technically against the law (it violates the “no decryption” clause of the DMCA). HOWEVER I have never heard of individuals who strictly adhere to the principles of “fair use” (i.e. only using the files for their own personal use, not giving/lending them to friends, etc.) getting in trouble for this.

   Unfortunately Hollywood constantly comes up with new ways of breaking ripping apps, and in general the Mac ripping apps are behind the curve in working around this. The only program I have found that reliably works and that is updated frequently as new encryption schemes are discovered is a Windows app called AnyDVD (http://slysoft.com/). Unfortunately this means you’ll need to keep a Windows box lying about. Not a problem for me, since I am a gamer and also need to deal with Windows and Windows apps for my job.
4. Trevor McPherson February 28, 2013 at 1:23 am

   Thanks for a great show. Just to let you know that the scansnap sponsor link is broken (both on this site and the 5by5 site). I was trying to find the new scansnap scanner you mentioned on the show. Would you mind putting it in show notes or mentioning it here in comments?

   Thanks for all your effort and time, you both have really make a huge difference to my life.
5. Cleve P. February 28, 2013 at 12:17 pm

   I wanted to comment on a few points mentioned in this edition of MPU.

   Mac Mini Server – I have run an old PC with Ubuntu for years as our house server. Plays nice with allMac devices, ultra-tweakable, and just plain fun. After I did some calculations I realized this behemoth of an old PC was not very energy efficient and the cost savings by switching to a Mac Mini would pay for itself in about 2.5 years. So I recently switched to a Mac Mini i5 (mid-2011). I also wanted to set this up as a dual purpose house server and media center. I initially used Plex with the Mac Mini hooked up to the HDTV via HDMI. and while the Plex interface is great, it just required too much babysitting to keep it running so I have switched to an Apple TV 3. I miss a lot of the features of Plex – but the Apple TV just works so deal closed. In the process of switching to the Apple TV, I disconnected the Mac Mini from the HDTV so it is now a truly headless server. I am very comfortable in command line and remote access admin a headless server so it should have been no problem. Unfortunately for some reason when you run the Mac Mini this way with no monitor attached it appears to have some bug that makes it run extremely slow and basically unusable. I rarely had the HDTV actually on with the mac Mini but there is some mechanism in the Mac Mini that sense at least a monitor is connected so it worked fine. Not sure why this is – but a search will find many people with the same problem. There are some hacks around to create a dongle with a HDMI to VGA adapter and a resistor if you want to go that route, I just attached another HDMI back to my HDTV and all is well now. Just a word of warning – true headless Mac Mini can be problematic (at least this model mid-2011).

   iDentify – on the topic of tagging files for Apple TV – iDentify is OK but it has never really sat well with me. Not sure – the GUI is a bit off, and it’s not free for the advanced features. There is an app though similar to iDentify with even more features called Subler . This is an indispensable tool for me. Not only can it identify and tag videos (pulling from themoviedb.org and tvdb.org) but it also can remux files without re-encoding (think MKV to MP4). It has access to all the hidden iTunes tags (HD, Content Rating, etc) and I HIGHLY recommend it. It also has a CLI version for terminal junkies like myself which is great for scripting and batch tagging.
6. Mark F. March 5, 2013 at 11:06 am

   I have never been so excited about forwarding an email, and then my heart was broken. Junecloud doesn’t support gmail’s auto forward option. Your mac.app has won this round.
7. Rome March 5, 2013 at 8:56 pm

   I really liked this episode. Thanks Katie, David and Shawn! I have the same laptop that Shawn has, so may be when I upgrade I can repurpose the laptop as a home server.

   As for the DVD ripping workflow, I am currently doing this to my DVD collection for space reasons as well. I have Apple TVs, so ideally, I want MP4 files with meta data as the final output. I highly recommend separating the ripping task from the recoding to MP4 task, as Shawn suggested. I am using MakeMKV to rip my DVDs to MKV, and that takes very little time, because it just repackages the data. Then I batch the encoding in Handbrake, because it is a processor hog and makes most sense to do that when I am away from the computer (overnight or during the workday). I queue up 3 or 4 a night.

   From there, I use MetaZ to get all the meta data of the DVDs. This also allows batching, so I can queue up all the MP4 files Handbrake spat out the night before. I use folders to track my workflow: MKV folder items save to the Handbrake folder as MP4, and the MetaZ folder is the last stop before iTunes import. I don’t currently use Hazel, but this may be a good use case for it.

   Going back to MKV for a bit. If you don’t get to encoding them to MP4 right away, you can still use some of the non-Apple TV media streamers to view the MKV files on your TV. Plus the MKV will hold the subtitles and other tracks, which the MP4 that Apple TV uses does not do so well.
8. BD March 12, 2013 at 1:51 pm

   I would be interested in comments or suggestions on the following situation.

   WIth the advent of solid state hard drives and their smaller capacity, I would like to offload data from the various laptops in the house to our Mac Mini (and its connected Drobo).

   Our Mac Mini is set up like Shawn’s — a Mini running Mountain Lion (not OS X Server). It’s primary function is to serve audio and video to Apple TVs, iPads, etc.

   To offload data from the laptops, I would like each laptop to have space on the Mini/Drobo in which to store files of any type. I have two requirements:

   1. Data stored by one user on the Mini/Drobo cannot be views or accessed by other users.

   2. The access to the data stored on the Mini/Drobo needs to be relatively seamless. For example, finding and launching an encrypted disk image that is stored on the Mini/Drobo will not work for the less techie members of the household.

   Can I do this with a Mini running Mountain Lion? Or do I need OS X Server? Other ideas of solutions?

   Thanks
   BD
9. wwFSMd March 14, 2013 at 11:11 am

   Hey Katie, David, and Shawn, thanks for the great show about home servers.

   My main use case for my home server is StreamToMe which is an iOS and Mac app. There is a server component (available free for both Mac and PC) that runs and encodes the media in real-time that takes into consideration the client’s available bandwidth (3g/4g/wifi throughput). The iOS apps have airplay so you can send any media on your home server to an Apple TV without having to re-encode any files.

   for more info google: streamtome

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