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leebrendalee · 2013-02-01, 08:39

ok, first I'm sorry for being such a noob but I simply don't understand this program and why I cannot get it through my head! I currently use Plex but have wanted to try this. Are they the same kind of program? If so Plex seems to be easier to figure out. This one is driving me crazy for a long time. Every week I keep trying to figure this out. I bet I've spend six hours so far. Anyway enough about my stupidity because thats the way I feel right now ..........and I'm usually pretty good at this stuff.

Plex has been really messing around with my media so I want to try this.

I've Xtbmc on my ipad now after a few weeks of installing ipad stuff from the apple store. Than I found something from Cydia. I thought I was paying for the real thing.......however, again I'm lost

All I want to do is get XBMC setup so I can watch my content on my ipad which is located on my external HD which is attached to my Imac. what the heck am I missing here?
Can you send me to a youtube video or something because I really do well watching or reading instructions.

Peace,

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2013-02-01, 14:35

XBMC is a highly configurable/skinnable/customizable media center with lots of rich media views and tons of supported video add-ons (among other add-ons). If you just want to be able to watch video on your iPad from files on your iMac, then there are a lot of other apps that are easier to set up. They don't have all the add-ons and customization of XBMC, but it sounds like you're not really looking for that. Also, XBMC really only works on a local network, and isn't designed to stream your media over the internet, so if you want to use your iPad and connect to the iMac while away from home, then XBMC isn't the solution.

If you still want to use XBMC:

The best thing to do is to get a feel for XBMC on your desktop computer, since it's easier to configure and experiment with stuff in that environment. There are tons of videos on youtube for doing various things, and the official manual should help you out a lot in understanding how to set things up: http://wiki.xbmc.org

leebrendalee · 2013-02-05, 09:21

Thanks Ned for the reply! I'm definitely only using it at home!! I just love the way XBMC looks compared to the other one which we won't mention. I have it working no problem on my imac but for some reason I cannot get it working on my ipad. Basically honestly I just go to bed every single night and to relax I just watch stuff that has been downloaded with sickbeard, sab, etc. . My movies are all on one external hd and my tv shows are on another one. So all I want to do is watch my stuff from my external drive..nothing fancy. Currently I use the other program and its fine. I want to use this one. It just seems so complicated to get setup and I'm a geek about these things and cannot get it. Go figure ;-) I think i've been to the wiki for sure and didn't get it so I don't know.......will have another go at it this week. It's so time consuming that I try every week for a few hours until I give up again.
cheers.

winestock · (This post was last modified: 2013-02-05, 10:14 by winestock.)

(2013-02-05, 09:21)leebrendalee Wrote: Thanks Ned for the reply! I'm definitely only using it at home!! I just love the way XBMC looks compared to the other one which we won't mention. I have it working no problem on my imac but for some reason I cannot get it working on my ipad. Basically honestly I just go to bed every single night and to relax I just watch stuff that has been downloaded with sickbeard, sab, etc. . My movies are all on one external hd and my tv shows are on another one. So all I want to do is watch my stuff from my external drive..nothing fancy. Currently I use the other program and its fine. I want to use this one. It just seems so complicated to get setup and I'm a geek about these things and cannot get it. Go figure ;-) I think i've been to the wiki for sure and didn't get it so I don't know.......will have another go at it this week. It's so time consuming that I try every week for a few hours until I give up again.
cheers.

What I do is setup XBMC how I like it on my iMac and then copy the XBMC user data folder from ~/Library/Applications Support/XBMC on the Mac to /var/mobile/Library/Preferences on the iPad. Before I copy over the data from the Mac to the iPad I edited the file ~/Library/Applications Support/XBMC/userdata/guisettings.xml and replaced every instance of Mac specific user paths with the string "special://home". The string "special://home" tells XBMC to look in the XBMC user folder (e.g. /Macintosh HD/Users/joe/Library/Application Support/XBMC). By me doing this I am able to use the same XBMC configuration setup on three different Mac computers that have different users and the iPad.

leebrendalee · 2013-02-06, 07:00

wow, no kidding eh, will def try that and reply back: thanks Winestock..wonderful

leebrendalee · (This post was last modified: 2013-02-07, 02:25 by leebrendalee.)

Winestock: update, I've done everything that you said and so far so good. It's just uploading now and I took a peek and so far it looks exactly like the one on my mac. I've closed it up now and am excited to check back tonight as I gotta go to work. I'll post how I did what I did above........with more detail.
thanks
peace.....................

ok I get a Path Not Found Remote Share error, any ideas?

winestock · (This post was last modified: 2013-02-07, 04:38 by winestock.)

(2013-02-07, 02:20)leebrendalee Wrote: Winestock: update, I've done everything that you said and so far so good. It's just uploading now and I took a peek and so far it looks exactly like the one on my mac. I've closed it up now and am excited to check back tonight as I gotta go to work. I'll post how I did what I did above........with more detail.
thanks
peace.....................
ok I get a Path Not Found Remote Share error, any ideas?

You will have to look in the XBMC log file from the iPad which is /var/mobile/Library/Preferences. Where is your media stored?

EDIT: I just re-read your first post of this thread. Your media is on an external HD attached to your Mac. Your source for your media is set for local access on your Mac which XBMC on the iPad can't access. To get this to work you are going to have to setup your Mac as a file server running NFS. Take a look at the XBMC wiki for this.

Once that is done you will need to re-import your media into XBMC again. There are several ways to do this. Probably the easiest for you is to add new source for the NFS server and rescrape all your movies again into XBMC.

leebrendalee · 2013-02-07, 06:25

Thank you! Another project I see.....ok will post back in a couple of days....................... ;-) online gaming comes first. (I sooo appreciate your help thanks again)

leebrendalee · 2013-02-09, 00:47

Ok this is beginning to be way to complicated. Trying to make an exports file is over my head and trying to do something with nfs is over my head. Instructions are all over the place and its just not worth it. I saw something about if you screw up your exports file you could turn your computer into a brick. LOL well that doesn't usually scare me but to keep editing this and that makes no sense whatsoever when plex is here. Not sure why it has to be this difficult. I don't mind messing with permissions and doing basic stuff and following directions but this seems way to complicated. If I had to duplicate it on another machine I couldn't do it so I think it's time to uninstall Xbmc until they can write simple instructions to be able to have all my media on an external drive and be able to access it from ipad, imac and appletv2. Simple and Plex does all that without blinking.

Thanks for everyone who tried to help..............

Peace...........

winestock · (This post was last modified: 2013-02-09, 07:36 by winestock.)

(2013-02-09, 00:47)leebrendalee Wrote: Ok this is beginning to be way to complicated. Trying to make an exports file is over my head and trying to do something with nfs is over my head. Instructions are all over the place and its just not worth it. I saw something about if you screw up your exports file you could turn your computer into a brick. LOL well that doesn't usually scare me but to keep editing this and that makes no sense whatsoever when plex is here. Not sure why it has to be this difficult. I don't mind messing with permissions and doing basic stuff and following directions but this seems way to complicated. If I had to duplicate it on another machine I couldn't do it so I think it's time to uninstall Xbmc until they can write simple instructions to be able to have all my media on an external drive and be able to access it from ipad, imac and appletv2. Simple and Plex does all that without blinking.

Thanks for everyone who tried to help..............

Peace...........

If you do decide to come back and try again I can help you with setting up NFS on your Mac. I have done it with my 2009 Mac-Mini running OS X 10.8.2. It does take a liitle bit of work to get your XBMC user library setup. Well worth the effort once you see the results.

leebrendalee · 2013-02-09, 19:49

Thanks Winestock, soon as I buy a mac mini I'll be back..
peace

winestock · (This post was last modified: 2013-02-09, 19:56 by winestock.)

(2013-02-09, 19:49)leebrendalee Wrote: Thanks Winestock, soon as I buy a mac mini I'll be back..
peace

You don't need a Mac-Mini to setup a NFS server. You can set it up on your iMac and still access the movies from your iMac running XBMC on your iMac. I used to setup my media server on my Mac-Mini using an NFS server which serviced my Mac-Mini, iMac and my MacBook Pro. There is no hit on performance when my Mac-Mini accessed the media through the NFS server running on the Mac-Mini. Food for thought.