The second test was worse. His mother’s favorite cooking show—her own, recorded in 2005—showed up as a green, pixelated mess because of a corrupted codec. Arjun spent six hours writing a re-muxing routine.
The screen flickered. A channel guide appeared. Instead of “CNN” or “BBC,” the groups read: FAMILY_1990s, FAMILY_2000s, VACATION_GOA, UNCLE_BHASKAR_WEDDING. mac2m3u
“Press ‘Load Playlist,’ Appa,” Arjun said, yawning. The second test was worse
But the magic was the translator.
Arjun would sigh, put down his work laptop, and walk to the Mac Mini. He’d open the folder, scroll past 400 files named FAM_1997_02.mkv , find the right clip, and AirPlay it to the Apple TV. It was clunky. It was analog thinking in a digital world. The screen flickered
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-logo="vhs.png" group-title="Family Archives", 1997 Pongal - Well Incident http://192.168.1.105:8080/stream/family_1997_02.mkv #EXTINF:-1 tvg-logo="vhs.png" group-title="Family Archives", 2001 Diwali Fireworks http://192.168.1.105:8080/stream/diwali_2001.mp4 He called it —a two-word name for a two-step process: take the Mac ’s files, turn them into an M3U .
The architecture was insane, held together by duct tape and Swift. He wrote a Python script that scanned the external drive, indexed every .mp4 , .mov , and .mkv file, and extracted metadata using ffprobe . He then built a tiny local web server—a FastAPI app—that transcoded the videos on the fly using ffmpeg . The Mac Mini’s fan screamed like a jet engine.
