Step 1: Get FFMPEG

Posted February 5th, 2007 by admin

You will first need FFMPEG... or at least a host that will do it for you.

For those of you who have been digging around on the internet looking for a video solution for your website may have already come accross the name FFMPEG. But what the heck is it? Well, simply put, FFMPEG is a program that will convert any video format to the very common and ever-so-cool Flash format. Go to YouTube and you will see what I am talking about... Every video shares the exact same video player, no matter what video format you uploaded. This is essential to the success of a video website. What is even more exciting about Flash, is that you can put interactive controls on all of your videos.

So, I am sure you are probably asking "Ok that's cool, but how can I get it?!" Well, I was asking the same thing about 3 months ago, when I first started reading tutorials on how to install the FFMPEG binary into your server. Well, good luck! Trying to read instructions on how to install FFMPEG on your server is like trying to read the Star Trek Clingon manual... not necessarily a page turner. So, I decided to look elsewhere, and finally stumbled on a GodSend... CirtexHosting! The second you sign up for an account, you already have the power of FFMPEG at your fingertips, and all for the price of a cheeseburger! If you do not have FFMPEG installed on your server, then STOP HERE... sign up for an account at CirtexHosting for $2.50 / month, and then continue this tutorial after you have done that. If you already have FFMPEG, then you can just skip to the next Step.

Flash Video in Drupal 5: A complete multimedia tutorial.

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I think I don't need FFMPEG

On June 12th, 2009 evan8818 says:

I think I don't need FFMPEG, But still thanks for your tips .:)
My new site powered by joomla.www.telecomleads.org

windows and ffmpeg

On May 20th, 2009 ruess says:

I was able to get ffmpeg to work on my Windows 2k3 server with relative simplicity.

I downloaded unofficial binaries from here: http://ffmpeg.arrozcru.org/builds/

Installed ffmpeg in c:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe (and put this path in the Flash Video global settings under "ffmpeg settings")

So far so good!

Thanks for this incredible module that actually does what it promises and very simply as well! I also appreciate the positive helpful, upbeat attitude of the author!

kevin

Necissary?

On March 24th, 2009 chuckienorton says:

I have a question,

is FFMPEG necessary to use the flashplayer? I already have all my videos as flvs, and don't need anything converted - just uploaded & linked.

If it's possible to not use it, can I turn it off by any chance?

Thanks!
Chuck

HostLuck.com Cheap and Relaible FFmpeg Hosting

On February 24th, 2009 hostluck says:

HostLuck.com offers Cheap FFmpeg hosting at $2/month with 5 Gb space and 20 Gb bandwdith
Check it out Cheap FFmpeg Hosting Plans

good one _______ arda

On January 5th, 2009 delta0x says:

good one

_______
arda turan kral tv Çok Güzel Hareketler Bunlar

Are you serious????

On August 27th, 2008 tbillion says:

Citrix? LMAO... u crack me up. Goto host monster and check it vs ur citrix,love your work but shoppin around never hurt no one. and oh yeah with hostmonster you have full control over perl modules which in this case if i am correct is exactly what FFMPEG is its a pers script set. and it is available for installation through hostmonster and its as easy as search click done.!!! best reguards

-Travis J.

HostMonster

On October 22nd, 2008 codedigger says:

HostMonster does NOT support FFMEG. It said...

Unfortunately, HostMonster does not support the FFMPEG module as it is too processor intensive.
The same applies to flvtools as it is also not supported for this reason.

Basically, any video encoding program or flash encoder will not work on our servers.

http://helpdesk.hostmonster.com/kb/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&id=270

Installing ffmpeg on a cPanel server with yum...

On May 10th, 2008 norio says:

Great module and tutorial!

I'm setting this up on my own server so here's instructions if you're using cPanel/WHM with Fedora/CentOS/RedHat/etc.

wget http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/4/freshrpms-release/... http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3... -i freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm
rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.3.4-1.fc1.rf.i386.rpm 

yum install ffmpeg

That did it for me. I first tried FreshRPMs by itself but that had dependency issues.

Afterwards, I uninstalled both repos (it's a server -- it shouldn't be kept clean!) like so:

rpm -e rpmforge-release
rpm -e freshrpms-release

ffmpeg Free Download

On May 5th, 2008 abuanas says:

Get it free here:
http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/

enjoy

Installing ffmpeg & Lamemp3 for FlashVideo module

On March 21st, 2008 junedkazi says:

I had a terrible time installing ffmpeg but finally I made it.I have written the whole tutorial in detail
and I hope everyone benefits from it.
Please follow this link step by step tutorial for installing ffmpeg and lamemp3

http://drupal.org/node/237072

and please do provide feedback on how did you like the tutorial.

Cheers

Juned Kazi

Great tutorial! Thanks for

On March 26th, 2008 travist says:

Great tutorial! Thanks for the contribution!

Cirtex Hosting

On December 19th, 2007 stg11 says:

I have been very disappointed with the response times and reliability I'm getting at Cirtex, We have experienced frequent downtimes for short periods and often have slow response times (20-second page loads). We previously were using TigerTech which had much faster response times but did not have ffmpeg already installed so we switched to Cirtex. Right now we are just testing our site with 1 to 3 users and limping along but it would never work to go live.

Why dont you try us?

On April 20th, 2008 crayonhost says:

We offer better services than cirtex

check us out

Reliable ffmpeg hosting

Get FFMpeg easily

On December 15th, 2007 maxigas says:

if you can log in to your server (via ssh or physical access), and it is running debian/ubuntu or any other derived system, simply do:

apt-get install ffmpeg

...and you have ffmpeg. no need to rely on capitalist companies this time!

not quite that simple, but on the right track

On April 18th, 2008 light-blue says:

Yesterday, I wrote the comment below, but today I found an even better walk-through for Debian users: http://stream0.org/2008/01/install-ffmpeg-on-debian-etch.html

Here's my post from yesterday though (which works great but won't allow Quicktime and Ogg Vorbis types):
==================================================
So, it's not that simple, but it's possible and do-able (for free) in under 60 minutes....

as explained in http://drupal.org/node/137203, apt-get install ffmpeg will NOT install the necessary mp3 and AMR decoders due to license restrictions, however maxigas is on the right track!

If you're running Debian, you'll need to install from source code, so budget about 30 minutes, but follow the instructions in the link above, or do like I did and follow this great step-by-step guide at http://www.mattiouz.com/blog/2007/07/02/how-to-install-ffmpeg-with-mp3-a...

AFTER THAT, MAKE THESE 3 TWEAKS AT admin/settings/flashvideo/edit/(your content type here):
===================================================
1) update the ffmpeg Path to /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg

2) /admin/settings/flashvideo/edit/(your content type here) under FFMPEG settings
-i @input -f flv -acodec libmp3lame -ar 22050 -ab 64k -ac 1 @output
by compiling with the link above, the default mp3 becomes libmp3lame

3) be sure to copy the mediaplayer folder contents of http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Media_Player to the files directory

Choosing hosting

On September 17th, 2007 mangio says:

Hi dude,

I host my site with cirtex on their share hosting

honestly for what i pay, they are not bad,

www.tastyfood.tv

Not Bad?

On December 19th, 2007 stg11 says:

I went to your website and it took about 40 seconds to load the home page. I don't consider that "not bad"

FFMPEG

On August 31st, 2007 drupal_videotesting says:

i am working on my local PC.
i have installed and enabled Flashvideo module.
i want to convert movie in to flash file.
i have configured the settings, i have also disabled the FlashVideo CCK module.
but when i create the node/content there is an error ,
--------- Fatal error: Class 'ffmpeg_movie' not found in

can you please provide more information on these?

Thank you,
Drupal - Provider

You just need to go to

On September 2nd, 2007 travist says:

You just need to go to FlashVideo Settings page and disable the setting for FFMPEG-PHP... not a big deal if you don't have it, the module will still work just fine.

Bypass FFMPEG?

On June 28th, 2007 boinkster says:

I'd like to bypass FFMPEG. My client has a vast library of .flv files ready to go . So I'd like to use this excellent module to pass them through, upload and play videos but can't figure out how to do it. I tried setting retries to 0, the file gets uploaded to /files but I can't shake the "video not available"

Try the new BETA version

On June 28th, 2007 travist says:

Try the new BETA version that I just released! I fix just this problem!

Thanks,

Travis.

Uploading FLVs directly

On July 27th, 2007 erkki_m says:

I downloaded the version 5.x-2.3, but when I upload flv-files directly, I still get the "Video not available" picture... Am I missing something?

Thanks!

EDIT: OK... I had to run the cron even when the ffmpeg wasn't actually needed. However, some problems remain:

user warning: Table 'drupal_local.ffmpeg_data' doesn't exist query: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ffmpeg_data WHERE (fid = 151) AND (status = 0) in /censored/drupal-5.1/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 172.
warning: filesize() [function.filesize]: stat failed for /censored/drupal-5.1/files/56_blooper.jpg in /censored/drupal-5.1/sites/all/modules/flashvideo/flashvideo.module on line 832.
user warning: Table 'drupal_local.ffmpeg_data' doesn't exist query: INSERT INTO ffmpeg_data (fid, created, input_file, output_file, status) VALUES (151, NOW(), '/censored/drupal-5.1/files/56_blooper.flv', '/censored/drupal-5.1/files/56_blooper.jpg', 0) in /censored/drupal-5.1/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 172.

Apparently, thumbnails are created into ffmpeg_data, but this table is never created, if one doesn't use ffmpeg at all...

ffmpeg_data cannot be created

On July 27th, 2007 erkki_m says:

For some reason flashvideo module cannot create the ffmpeg_data table:

user warning: BLOB/TEXT column 'input_file' can't have a default value query: CREATE TABLE ffmpeg_data ( did int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, fid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', created timestamp NOT NULL, input_file text NOT NULL default '', output_file text NOT NULL default '', status tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', data text NOT NULL default '', PRIMARY KEY (did) ) TYPE=MyISAM COMMENT='size is in bytes' /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */; in /censored/drupal-5.1/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 172.

My test site is running on Windows XP SP2, PHP 5.2.0.

You are actually the first

On July 27th, 2007 admin says:

You are actually the first person I have heard who is using Windows XP SP2 for this module. Please send me an email showing me the exact changes you had to make to get it to work, and I will try to put it into the next release.

Thanks,

Travis.

I'm 99% sure that this is

On July 29th, 2007 erkki_m says:

I'm 99% sure that this is the issue: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=25520.

Personally, I got it to work when I manually executed the CREATE TABLE command with SQLyog. I have no idea why SQLyog did the job but mysql "command prompt" didn't... But the table creation worked fine with my primary site which is running on Linux.

But you should be able to see the "bug" if you change you're sql-mode to strict and then try to execute the CREATE TABLE query.

Anyway, in a nutshell, I believe this are the lines that cause the problem:

input_file text NOT NULL default '',
output_file text NOT NULL default '',
data text NOT NULL default '',

dreamhost is good, too

On April 16th, 2007 digitalknowledg... says:

I have taken a look at my dreamhost account which is by far the best I have ever had (and I had many...). You have absolute control, even SSH. Everything just works, oooh how I love that!

You can easily set up ffmpeg on dreamhost, just have a look at the wiki (short and easy instructions). And: it works :)

The best: get one year, around 200Megs for only 17$: use the promocode PIMPMEUP.

cheers
:)

Can't find FFMPEG in the link

On April 2nd, 2007 dynamic says:

Hi!
This seems interesting and I am very thankful that you are sharing this. I just wonder, because when I click the banner above I get into a web hosting company where I can subscribe to different hosting alternatives, but I can't find the FFMPEG program. Personally I already have a host so I only need the software.
Thanks again