media hive is a cross-platform (works in OS X, Windows and Linux) streaming media management project. With it, you can access your media collection from any web browser, and play your media from anywhere you have Internet access. This tutorial will guide you in setting up and using media hive.

1. To get started, download media hive. This steps and screenshots for this tutorial are specific to OS X, but Windows and Linux users should be able to follow along.
2. In OS X, open a Terminal by going to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal. Navigate to the mhive directory using the cd command. If you unpacked media hive to your desktop, type cd Desktop/mhive. Launch media hive by typing ./mhive.sh.

   Windows users: double-click mhive.bat in the media hive folder.

   You’ll be prompted to create a user name and password.


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3. A whole bunch of text will fly by. Wait until it’s done scrolling.


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4. Now open your web browser and load the page http://localhost:8080. Enter the user name and password you just created two steps ago.


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5. You might as well check out the default template, as you can change it at any time. So leave Everything,Everything selected, and click Set Skin.


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6. Enter the path to your audio and video files in the spaces provided. In OS X this will probably be something like: /Users/your-user-name/Movies for AVI and MPEG files, and /Users/-your-user-name/Music for Vorbis and MP3 files.

   In Windows, it will probably be something like: C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\My Documents\My Movies for AVI and MPEG files, and C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\My Documents\My Music for Vorbis and MP3 files.

   When you’re done, click Save


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7. Wait a minute or two while the media hive builds your catalog.


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8. All of your video files should be listed. Select Music from the Change Media Type drop-down list to see your audio files.


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9. To view the other skins, select one from the Change Skin drop-down list.


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10. The iPhone skin is neat, but didn’t totally work for me (might have been a Firefox issue).


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11. To access media hive from another Internet connected device on your local network, just visit the internal IP address of the machine running media hive (on port 8080). For info on determining your internal IP address in OS X, see this tutorial. For info on determining your internal IP address in Windows, see this tutorial.



12. You can stream your playlists from media hive to any Internet connected media player that supports MP3/OGG/AVI and/or MPEG.



13. Selecting playlists is straight forward.



14. Video streams quite well across my local network, but not so great across the Internet (this is due to my less than fantastic upstream bandwidth). Audio streams perfectly across the Internet.



15. If you want to be able to connect to media hive from outside of your home network, you’ll need to enable port forwarding for port 8080 in your router/gateway.