Flash Video in Drupal 5: A complete multimedia tutorial.

I think if you want to save all your troubles

you can always go to CrayonHost

they already got things in place an have great support

look at my website for sample site

Anton Soeharyo

Hi Travis

thanks a lot for all your time.
I have a clearly defined problem but no clue how to solve it.

exactly did all you explained
when I upload the movie there is a problem with the path:
++++++++++
warning: rename(/var/www/drupal-5.0//var/www/drupal-5.0/files/wwwBI_T29_T31.avi,/var/www/drupal-5.0//var/www/drupal-5.0/files/94_wwwBI_T29_T31.avi) [function.rename]: No such file or directory in /var/www/drupal-5.0/modules/flashvideo/flashvideo.module on line 1464.
++++++++++
as you see the "/var/www/drupal-5.0/" is for some reasons doubled :-(
this of course messes up the whole thing of conversion etc etc

I would appreciate any help...
thanks
selim

Travis - again, great module.
One issue in the install file, though, is that mysql (v. 5.0.45) keeps dying on the "CREATE TABLE ffmpeg_data ..." statement, saying "#1101 - BLOB/TEXT column 'input_file' can't have a default value".
You may want to remove the default values for text fields from that statement.

Hope that's helpful...

Hi All,
I have install flash video module, ffmpeg program. Everything is working fine like converting to flv and creating thumbnail. While submitting the node the video file is converting into the flv format and plays the only once after submitting. But if I go again that node after clicking the thumbnail(created by ffmpeg) it shows the blank page. I dont know whats the reason. Any help would be appreciate.

Hi, I added the possibility to sort videos on play_counter in views. Here are the code of the flashvideo_views.module (based on 5x-2.6-beta version. Feel free to try it.

/**
* Implementation of hook_help()
*/
function flashvideo_views_help($section = 'admin/help#flashvideo_views')
{
switch ($section) {
case 'admin/help#flashvideo_views':
$output = 'The FlashVideo Views module provides a new Field in
the Views module that allows you to see the Video or Video Thumbnail.';
return $output;

case 'admin/settings/modules#description': return t('Provides a plugin to allow Views functionality to the
FlashVideo Module.');
}
}

/**
* The views plugin for the FlashVideo module is developed and maintained
by * user mikesmullin at http://drupal.org/user/108440
*
*
* This include file implements views functionality on behalf of the
* flashvideo.module. */

function flashvideo_views_views_tables() {
$tables['flashvideo'] = array(
'name' => 'flashvideo',
'join' => array(
'left' => array(
'table' => 'node',
'field' => 'nid'
),
'right' => array(
'field' => 'nid'
),
),
'fields' => array(
'nid' => array(
'name' => t('FlashVideo: Video'),
'handler' => 'flashvideo_views_handler_video',
'option' => array(
'#type' => 'select',
'#options' => 'flashvideo_views_option_video',
),
'notafield' => true,
'sortable' => true,
),
),
'sorts' => array(
'play_counter' => array('name' => t('Flashvideo: Played
Counter'))
),
);
return($tables);
}

/**
* Views handler for displaying the video.
*/
function flashvideo_views_handler_video($fieldinfo, $fielddata, $value,
$data) {
$node = node_load($data->nid);
switch ($fielddata['options']) {
case 0: // Flash Video Player
return flashvideo_get_video($node, array());
case 1: // Thumbnail Image
case 2: // play_counter
return $node->play_counter;
default:
return flashvideo_get_thumbnail($node, array());
}
}

/**
* Views - Generate a list of options for the */
function flashvideo_views_option_video($op) {
return array(
t('Flash Video Player'),
t('Thumbnail Image'),
t('Played Counter')
);
//return $a;
}

Hi, flashvideo is a great module. Thanks for developing !

I have a suggestion for the automatic import via video_import directory.

I think the import should not set the videos automatically to "published" after rendering the video, since the author may want to, change the title, edit the node text before publishing the video. It would be great if the module would grab the default settings (Publish settings, Comment settings) of the node type settings.

I think i also found a bug. Selecting the node type for the automatic import seems to only work correctly when you enable flashvideo support for at least 2 node types. Otherwise it does not save video with the correct node type and falls back to the default node type specified in the module source code.

Hello there,

I love the FlashVideo project because of it's automation and simplicity.

However, as I have my video blog on my own home server, I have a pretty bad upload speed. What I'd want to know is that would it be possible to do this: After converting the video file to flv, it gets uploaded to a specified ftp site (external) and then it gets linked to the post.

This would make the videos buffer/load way faster, but I could still have it on my own server. I have access to hosted ftp, but I'm simply wondering if there's an easy way to accomplish this, or if I need to dig into the code?

Thank you!

- Dids

Hello

First of all, thanks for your walkthough! I am an absolute newbie (hosting on Dreamhost.com) and have little knowledge in terms of server administration. Anyway, I did everything, and yet it keeps saying "no video availble" even if I manually run the cronjob.

have a look yourself:

http://www.tiervideos.net/?q=tracker

If anybody could help I'd be sooo glad. Feel free to register and try it out yourself (cronjobs run every 10 minutes). I'm a bit annoyed with the whole situation as I can't continue to work on my site (which is pretty poor at the moment ;-) without the flash player working.

My client wants to track video plays by user. I think it could be done with Google analytics: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55520...
but this looks like it would involve hacking the player.

Can you think of a easier way to do this?

I've downloaded your flashvideo 4.7.x-1.0 at drupal.org. I bypasseed your step 1 because I dont have FFMPEG and I only inted to upload .flv files.

The problem is I can't get it to run on a page content. Do you have any guide in installing it in drupal 4.7?

Thanks

Hi Travis,

Great work on this module btw. Love it! I have a question, maybe you can help.

I've uploaded 10 movies to my site, successfully. Thumbnails worked and all display beautifully. Here's the rub. I've decided I don't like the 2 second thumbnail clipping, so I extended it to 20 seconds. Now, I'm stuck. How do I get the module to re-thumbnail the videos? Please don't tell me I have to re-upload them.

If there is an easy way to do this, I would love to know how.

Peace!

Your tutorial is great, i joined cirtex as per your recomendation on your site following your link. I downloaded flash video module and install it and enable it for content type page.
The settings are as follows;
ffmpeg settings;
ffmpeg command: -i @input -f flv -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 -ab 64 -ac 1 @output
ffmpeg path: /usr/bin/ffmpeg
out put directory : /files
flash player settings:
player name: flvplayer.swf (i renamed it from player.swf cuz the flash player which resides in the files directory is called flvplayer.swf so i didnt chaneg that)
The location of flashvideo_playlist.php is the main directory where the 'sites' and 'file' directories are.

Now when i a create a new page and attach a video to it and upload it, and run the cron job, it apperas in the file directory with .flv extension, which means that the conversion is ok. But the converted size is actually larger than the original. The other problem is that when i check out the page, the page is there but the video doesnt appear.
Any help with this will be greately appreciated.

Sorry for sounding really thick here. My first day using Drupal and have to get the flash Video Module up and running.

You state to install the flash Video module but do you have any documentation on this ( as I can't seem to find any)?

Thanks a million

not to worry I think I have got it

upgrading to 1.7 worked well and it is a really great module. I will wait for a release to be fixed thumbnail feature. thanks.

just upgraded to v1.7

upload dir: files
output dir: files
uploaded foo.flv and foo.avi
both displayed ok

changed settings
upload dir: files
output dir: files/flashvideo
uploaded foo.avi , run cron ... displays ok
uploaded foo.flv , run cron ... no output is created in output dir, no entry in ffmpeg_data

on a side note: would it be possible to have the uploaded video
deleted upon successful ffmpeg conversion?

Thank you for implementing the flashvideo module!!!

Hello everyone. Since I have had such great response with this article. I have decided to create a forum for general discussions. If you have a question about FFMPEG, FlashVideo, or Drupal in general. Please feel free to post it there....

The comment section is getting a little hard to navigate, and the Forum structure is much easier to browse topics and questions.

Thanks!

Travis.

Are there any settings with ffmpeg that can be optimized to increase the quality of the flash movie created. In general, the movie is really blocky in nature.

I have had better results using On2 flix to replace each of the converted videos manually but prevents the scalability of the application.

Thanks

I got this up and running in no time at all, very nice. I am wary of using it though mainly because there is a cheaper solution for my needs though more work intensive..let me explain.
Using a dedicated host and your module with ffmpeg might be ok if I run the cron jobs when the traffic is low since its to cpu intensive to have the server encoding and serving videos to traffic.

The storage for dedicated is usually somewhat small and expensive especially if im already paying 100$ a month for something that makes no money, it would be rather easy to fill up a 10gb drive with videos.

OK heres my solution, use amazons s3 for storage and serving media files..its cheap and its on a big pipe which means speed and no downtime and it will take the load off the encoding server.
The problem is this might get complicated, user uploads--->your machine encodes the original file --->flv is sent to amazon s3--->thumbnails and video is show on your page. original file is deleted or send to s3 as backup. They charge a flat rate for storage and bandwidth.

Another even cooler option though its in beta is the amazon EC3 service which can directly accept user uploads-->encode using ffmpeg and the send it to S3 for you to use. You are charged soemthing like .10 cents per hour of dedicated cpu time, very effective for encoding.

Im not sure if your familair with all this but it would really be useful for drupal as a whole, you can check out the media_mover module http://drupal.org/project/media_mover and the drupal file group for more info and some of the problems they are facing http://groups.drupal.org/node/2383

What to you think about something like this?I'd love to help this out by providing server, testing or even donations.

I initially had a problem with 'seeing' the upload video node, but have attached it now successfully to my page node, and it works! I needed to reset and update my databases. I still am unable to create a new node and have the video upload available. I have created a "Video" content node and enabled Flashvideo for it with basic settings. When I create content with this type however, there is no Upload Video dialog.

Any ideas?

SJMO2

I've read the comments regarding ffmpeg-PHP and what your module uses it for, and appreciate the clarification. I do, however, wish I could get a liiiitle bit more info about that. If I have ffmpeg but NOT ffmpeg-PHP, and therefore don't get to "extract the height and width for reference," what disadvantage will I suffer? Can you be a bit more specific? Is there any particular feature that simply does NOT work without having the ffmpeg-PHP? I guess I'm wondering where this extracted information is used and whether I'll suffer any loss of functionality if I have to uncheck that checkbox. It will help me make an informed decision about whether I must switch to a web host which has the ffmpeg-PHP compiled in.

(As a side note, do you know whether there are any drawbacks to having ffmpeg-PHP installed as an extension [under "Building as an Extension" in the ffmpeg-php page] rather than compiled into PHP?)

Thank you in advance for your help; your module is terrific and a lot of people really appreciate your efforts.