Photo and (home) video server/sharing on mac osX

[dugbug]

Ignoring the limited icloud photo streaming, long term storage/archiving and viewing of photos and home videos is a problem I'm trying to solve (not to mention removing them from the phone).

I have an iTunes-equipped home-sharing-enabled mac server with large amount of itunes movies, music, and tv shows and it seems the perfect target for keeping my ever growing photo collection.

Unfortunately photos and home movies seem to be second class citizens in home sharing. It seems that the full iphoto library can be seen from a home sharing apple tv if they are in iphoto, but not seen on the ipad or iphone.


iPhoto?
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So do I use iPhoto on the mac to archive my pictures? If so, how does one browse your archived photos from an ipad without some INSANE manual syncing/selection.

And if I use iPhoto, what happens to home movies? Are they visible to the apple tv?


Plex?
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I was thinking PLEX with a plex app would be one way. I believe plex integrates with the iphoto database if its running on the same mac, then a plex app on the iphone/ipad can be used to view photos without requiring a sync. If Plex truly lives in harmony with iphoto, I could use iphoto for apple TV and for importing, while plex sniffs iphoto database.


XBMC?
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Like PLEX, XBMC has ios apps out there that can be used to view content.


Hard to believe apple doesn't have an easy way to view photo archives on the phone

 

[dugbug]

Some other possibilities:

Tool to automatically server iphoto over web (so one could use safari to browse archive):
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/20516/web-iphoto-access

AirPics (only works with ipad but similar to above)
http://yellowbek.com/airpics-app/

Adobe Revel cloud storage (I think you would have to give up iphoto)
http://www.adobe.com/products/revel/features.html

also I looked into iPhoto for IOS but it does not talk to iPhoto for Mac over home sharing either, wtf apple.

 

[satcomer]

If you are really worried by iTunes taking up to much space then use a NAS and move your iTunes Library to it. Just don't just drag & drop instead Appple wants you to use iTunes itself to move its' Library. You can read/watch what i am talking about in the article How To move an iTunes library to an External.

 

[dugbug]

If you are really worried by iTunes taking up to much space then use a NAS and move your iTunes Library to it. Just don't just drag & drop instead Appple wants you to use iTunes itself to move its' Library. You can read/watch what i am talking about in the article How To move an iTunes library to an External.

The iphone/ipad will still not see the photos. Some NAS units come with ios apps if you buy into their photo storage system.

Edit: Not worried about space on the mac server, but on the iphones. Need to centralize photos but once they are off the phones they are only viewable from apple TV or macs.