AVI files can be supported (I think) Maybe this will help?
On my Mac, I can use Quicktime (you may need the PRO version) to create a ‘Reference Movie’ (creates the atomic references that iTunes expects in it’s media) and – provided you have a Quicktime compatable decoder for the codecs used in the avi – it will decode in iTunes.
There are two major problems with this:
1. Creating the Reference Movies is a *serious* pain in the ass. I’ve hunted in vain for command line pograms that will create them, automator actions and the file structure so I might be able to build them myself.
2. Even streaming from the same computer as watching I can’t get a steady stream. Maybe this is because firefly is optimised for m4v streaming? (Using this method and putting the video directly into the iTunes library allows proper watching)
Has there been any advance on the possibility of an on-the-fly transcode? I’d love to be able to use this to serve my media to an appleTV, without having to transcode *everything* beforehand. (There are similar things for Windows computers that transcode for the xbox360 – surely the processing power is there on modern computers?)
Keep up the good work!