2009年3月29日星期日

Starting Your Business on Linux In 2009 - Building Your Own Video Sharing Site

Even thought the authorities and business leaders are pessimistic for the economy of 2009 because of the well-known financial crisis, when talk about FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and Linux, they always feel comforted and delighted.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, sees Linux and the FOSS ecosystem surrounding it as having insurmountable advantages in any market over its main competitor Windows — advantages that an economic downturn only intensifies. At a time when a search for the lowest possible price point is happening in such areas as notebooks, FOSS is available at no cost. It is easy to rebrand and customize in a way that Windows Isn’t, and is also technically more efficient. “Lower cost, faster time to market, higher profit margins, better branding — these are all things that are in favor of Linux and not in favor of Windows”, he summarizes.

From the above point of view, we can see the encouraging outlook of Linux in the year 2009. For you, maybe it is a new business opportunity. Please consider about starting your business on Linux from building a video sharing site just like YouTube.

Here I introduce you a professional but low-cost tool - Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash (Linux Version), which provides a complete and creative video hosting solution for video uploading and sharing. This video encoder for Linux can convert almost all popular formats of video to FLV format. You can do advanced video editing, batch conversion, quality control and other tasks with CGI or any other server-side scripting languages.

More details: http://www.flvsdk.com/flv-encoder-command-line/index.html

Sothink Comes Educational Video Sharing Solution for YouTube Clone Sites!

Nowadays more and more schools and colleges worked on building their own video sharing websites to share education videos and one of their choices is the solution called Sothink Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash (Windows Version) - video sharing software.

That means the academia, or the educational services have the same choice as the most popular video sharing websites—choosing Flash format to share video online.

Why?

“Although Flash may not offer the same quality as some of the other formats, it can deliver streaming video content without worrying about players and operating systems”, said YouTube operator.

Almost every machine in the world has the Flash player and Flash in the long run is going to be the preferential media. So, the builders of YouTube clone sites also choose to share Flash videos. As for schools and colleges, surely Flash is the best and simple enough choice for them to build video sharing sites.

Nowadays, besides on computers, students also would like to watch and listen to lectures on PDAs, iPods, iTunes or in MP3. It is great if schools and colleges could build their own video sharing website to share the educational videos. And it is really needed such a video sharing website for learning, sharing and communication

Then, a powerful and easy-to-use video sharing software is needed.

Sothink Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash (Windows Version) provides users a complete and creative video sharing solution for video uploading and sharing, especially a perfect solution for building a education video sharing site just like many popular video sharing websites. It does best to meet schools and colleges’ video hosting needs and can be applied to web servers, blogs, forums and other interactive areas.

Create video hosting server easy. Know how.

YouTube-like video hosting web-sites take high enough rating positions in the Internet. Sophisticated process do you think is the developing of such video services and web-sites?
No. It is easier than it seems to be. Ok, let create our own video hosting web-site. I am going to demonstrate the easiness of it using Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash. All we need is a web-shell. And Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash will undertake the creation of thumbnails and converting of video clips from avi, mpeg, mpg, mpe, dat (VCD), vob (DVD), wmv, asf, asx, mp4, mov, 3gp, 3g2, 3gpp, dv, qt, rm, rmvb formats into flash flv format.

Easiest way to convert video on server-side on-the-fly.
Easiest way to convert video on server-side on-the-fly.

Install it easy

At the first we should choose an operating system our server will run under. It could be any Windows- or Linux-based platform with preinstalled set of web-server. We will use Apache2 + PHP + MySQL.

You can find PHP, ASP, and ASP.NET server settings samples in Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash documentation, therefore, in order to avoid repeating, we will explain the main point of encoder’s operation.
A user upload video file on the server using browser form.
As soon as the video file had appeared on the server, we make an order Sothink Video Encoder to convert it and the encoder converts the file into flv-format.
And then end-user can play this flv-file on a separate public web-page using special swf-player.

A lot of examples of code.
A lot of examples of code.

Additionally there is a function of watermark application on video and on-the-fly creation of video clip thumbnail to add it in video file gallery.

During testing of Sothink Video Encoder on PHP we created a files uploading form, then moved our video file in “tmp” directory and made order Sothink Video Encoder to process the uploaded file and move the converted file into a directory “movies“.

The command looked like:
fvec tmp/source.avi movies/result1.flv -vw 320 -vh 240 -tn thumbs/thumb1.jpg -tw 160 -th 120

The FVEC has converted AVI into FLV, has changed video frame size into 320×240 and has created a thumbnail. The encoder has dropped the thumbnail in the directory “thumbs”, and ready-for-view flash video file – into the directory “movies“.

In fact, we needed just only install the shell and define the directories for results.

Additional command settings allow:
- to manage outcome audio and video settings
- to get various income file information
- and other
The program settings are flexible.

E.M. Total Video Converter Command Line 2.20

E.M. Total Video Converter Command Line offers a console solution for video conversion on Windows and Linux (via Wine) . You can use it for conversion between most video formats (such as FLV, SWF, AVI, WMV, MP4, 3GP, MPG, MOV, MP3, DV, AAC and so on), it also can convert video for your mobile video player (such as PSP, PS3, iPod, iPhone and etc.) easily. Functions of video resizing, combining, trimming are also the advantages belonging to it.

Command Line Flash 8 FLV Encoding

I have been searching for a command line Flash 8 (VP6) FLV video creation tool for a long time. I've bought On2's Flix Pro - but even though it is a mile better than Sorenson's horrible Squeeze, it still had some serious issues with AviSynth input for instance. In general it was good for one-at-the time encoding, but batch processing was tedious and buggy.

So for a while I had actually went back to Flash 6, and batch encoding via ffmpeg's built-in FLV-encoder. While browsing for some info on VP6, I found an ffmpeg patch, that allowed for VP6 AVI to FLV muxing. Even though it's a few months old, it hadn't been included in ffmpeg, so I merged it myself, and after learning how to build ffmpeg, I got a working version. Here are the tools you need:

ffmpeg win32 binary including VP6 FLV mux patch.
Toolpack with example avs and bat.

You also need: Avisynth 2.5.6 or later, and last but not least the On2 VP6.2 VFW codec. The On2 codec is free for personal use, but for some strange reasion it is no longer offerered at On2's website. For commercial use, you should be (morally) ok, if you just buy Flix Pro.

Short how-to:
  1. Install AviSynth.
  2. Install VP6.2 codec.
  3. Unpack ffmpeg and the toolpack from above in the same directory.
  4. Put an AVI file called "example.avi" (that is readable by AviSynth) into the directory with ffmpeg.
  5. Run "example.bat".
  6. Wait.
  7. You should (with a bit of luck) have an "example.flv" by the time the bat file finishes.
You can use the excellent FLV Player by Martijn de Visser to watch your result offline, or use Jeroen Wijering's great Flash Video Player and put your result online.

Customization.

The important part of video encoding is of course customization. There are three main points. The AviSynth script providing the input - the video encoding parameters and the audio encoding parameters. I will cover how you can modify these settings, as there are many good guides on what settings to use for good quality.

Video to FLV command line

Flash Video MX SDK V2 is placed on the shelf for the on-demand solution to convert video to Flash under COM environment and Flash Video MX SDK V2 environment.

Videos and audios in AVI, WMV, MOV, FLV, MP4, H.264,MPEG, MPG, VOB, 3GP, 3G2, DVD, DV, MP3, WMA, MP3, etc. are all supported, and On2 VP6, H.263 video codecs are within reach too. The leaps of functions like: thumbnail capture, video resizing, trimming, and one processor locking (for dual-processor) will exceed your expectation in integrating this EXE or DLL SDK to desk-top programs or web servers.

VP6 FLV Commandline Encoding Tool

Hi!

I just finished something that might be helpful for you - a way to convert from AviSynth to a VP6 FLV using only free command-line tools.

I wrote the instructions and put up the tools needed at:
http://flvsdk.blogspot.com/

Basicly you make a VP6.2 AVI, and convert it to FLV using a patched ffmpeg.
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ADShareit Flash to Video Command Line

A powerful command line utility for converting flash to video on web server. It can be executed by any scrips such as WSH, or BAT, and can be called from webserver scripts such as ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, perl or python. Cover all features of "ADShareit SWF to Video Converter Pro" that convert Macromedia Flash SWF to AVI, SWF to DVD, SWF to VCD / SVCD, SWF to MPEG files including movie clips, action scripts and audio in the Flash movies. Convert Macromedia Flash SWF to GIF animation, so that you can create animated GIF using FLASH MX and SWish. Convert Macromedia Flash SWF to PNG / TGA / BMP / JPEG /GIF images sequence. Allow human interaction during conversion, no skip frames, support 32bits RGBA alpha channel, allow to only convert the specified rectangular area. Requirements: Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX 5.0 or above, 8.0 or above is recommended. What's New: Support passing flashvars to a swf file. .

License: Shareware | Price: $1490.00 | Size: 2.8 MB | Downloads (16)

Platform: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 , Windows Vista

SWF To Video Scout 1.62

Converts flash (SWF, FLV) movies into AVI, MPEG, FLV videoFeatures: Converts flash into MPEG, AVI, VideoCD, DVD video with sound support; Audo and video compression support; Additonal "frame-by-frame conversion" mode for highest quality conversion; Built-in flash movie viewer and extractor; Version with command-line interface support provides ability to automate conversion for software developers to incorporate program into their application

Video to Flash Console

Video to Flash Console is a command linel tool for converting your digital videos to SWF or FLV in a batch script or command line konsole mode. You can use console Video to Flash Converter on a webservers and run conversion using command line parameters automatically by scheduling or by script...

Flash Video MX SDK V2

convert video to Flash under COM and command line environment
Flash Video MX SDK V2 is to help server applications to convert the uploaded videos from virtually any format to Flash video (FLV), Flash (SWF), and AAC/H.264 MP4! With it you can build a video website like that of YouTube, Google video, Yahoo! Video, This program is also widely used in multimedia applications for video to FLV, SWF conversion under C/++, Visual Basic, Delphi, ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, and so on.

How to automate conversion of flash (SWF) movies into AVI, MPG, WMV video with sound using command line interface of SWF To Video Scout

This page contains information about command line parameters for SWF To Video Scout to help automate conversion of flash SWF movies (video, animations) into video files using SWF To Video Scout

First download and install SWF To Video Scout

IMPORTANT: To use command line interface automation in registered version you have to purchase one of the following license types:

Command Line License - allow to use command line program automation on one single workstation only
Developer License - allow to use command line interface and re-distribute program along with your end-user desktop application software without any additional royalties
Web License - allow to install and use program on one single web-server

For more information about these licenses please visit http://bytescout.com/purchase_swftovideoscout_developer.html

Command Line interface parameters:

/H - run program in automated mode
/S - set output video width and height in form of WIDTHxHEIGHT, for example: /H320x240
/F - set output video FPS. For example: /F15
/N - do not capture sound
/T - set path to temporary folder to store intermediate files. For example: /T"c:\temp\"
/V - set part of video codec name so program will search codec in list of available codecs and will select this codec to compress final video. For example: /VDivX
/C - conversion mode. (1 - realtime (default), 2 - frame by frame conversion without sound). For example: /C or /C1
/A - don't auto close conversion - user will be required to click "Stop" or conversion can be stopped using global timeout parameter (see /G parameter)
/G - global timeout in seconds.For example /G200 - auto-stop conversion after 200 seconds. /G equal to /G600 (stop conversion after 600 seconds)
/P or /PN - force "play" button every N seconds for example /P3 - force play button every 3 seconds. /P = /P10 (force play every 10 seconds)
/L"filename" - write log file to filename. /L uses default filename = {APPDATA}\SWF To Video Scout\Log.txt
/K"customcaption" - set custom caption for conversion wizard UI window (Developer License is required for this parameter)

Example:

// convert first 120 seconds of SWF into MPEG video with 300x300 dimensions and 15 FPS using built-in
// MPEG conversion, write log file into default log file location

SWFToVideoScout.exe "C:\My Flash Movies\gollum.swf" "C:\Converted\gollum.mpg" /H /S300x300 /V#MPEG /L /F15 /G120

Log File Constants

Program writes a log file (check /L command line parameter)

Following error names are used to indicate errors in a log file:

ERROR_OK - conversion successfull
ERROR_POST_PROCESSING_ABORTED - post-processing aborted by user clicked "Cancel" button
ERROR_CAN_NOT_COPY_INTERMEDIATE_FILES - can not copy intermediate files into final video file
ERROR_DLL_REQUIRED_NOT_FOUND - not able to find filter ascapscout.ax or not installed
ERROR_CONVERSION_STOPPED_BY_GLOBAL_TIMEOUT - conersion will continue but it was stopped by global timeout timer (see /G command line parameter)
ERROR_LARGE_OUTPUT_SIZE_DECREASED_TO_SCREEN - conversion will continue but output video dimensions were decreased to fit the screen
ERROR_SOURCE_FILE_IS_ZERO_SIZE - conversion can not be done as input file is zero size