Air Video Server is a very robust video sharing tool. It is cross-platform and it currently works under Windows and Mac OS X. Air Video Server allows you to stream your video files to iPhones and iPods alike, being the iPod Touch the only supported iPod. From those two devices, you have to download an app that will receive the video Air Video Server streams over your network. Air Video Server simply shares folders in your computer and monitors them in search of video files. When a folder contains video files, Air Video Server recollects information about them and readies them for playback on your iPhone, for example. Most files can be played immediately, but some (those formats not supported natively on the iPhone) will have to be converted. The iPhone application warns you when this is the case and sends a command to the server to initiate a conversion operation. The good thing is that you don't have to wait for the server to finish converting a file, you can start watching it or have the application seek forward to any point in the movie. For most formats, the application works great. I found that some higher quality files in those unsupported formats tend to not play at all on the iPhone or just make it hang waiting for a feed to be sent. All the regular .AVI files that I have tried worked perfectly. The server holds a record of all the operations that took place each session, and you can access that record in the Logs tab. You can also set a resolution at which files will be converted when requested.
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