Uploading and encoding video

K!LL!@N

I'll get straight to the point.

I want to be able to allow people to upload video clips to a site and then play them back in a flash player.

I've found a decent flash player that will play back the content.

My main issue is, of course, encoding the video.

I've been looking around and found FFMPEG.

Does anyone have any experience using this?

Then there are commercial encoding engines like ON2's stuff.
From what i can see that costs $1500 to license, which isn't really an option for me at the moment.

Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?

Killian

K!LL!@N

I've been digging around some more and have come across this.
Seems very promising.

Also, came across ffmpeg-php.

It's kinda late so i don't have time to be trying anything right now.

Anyone used either of the above?

Killian

Sniipe

FFMPEG seems to be the free one of choice at the moment. But there are other things you need to consider.
Where are you hosting the video's?
Will bandwidth be an issue?
The server needs to be dedicated as shared hosting will not be able to handle encoding too well.
Would you consider allowing flv files to be uploaded and giving the user a link to an FLV converting site?

Sniipe

hey K!LL!@N send me a PM if u are going ahead with this, I'm probably at the same stage and 2 heads are better than 1.
I'm hosting FLV files on my server and have them playing. I have an asp page to upload the files, and all I'm interested in now is converting .wmv, .avi, .mov or .mpg files into flv, then uploading that info into some database for easy and quick retrieval.

Laslo

I use Sorenson Squeeze.

K!LL!@N

I went ahead and tried FFMPEG.

Seems to work pretty well, I was able to ssh in and convert a .MOV file that i'd uploaded and it gave me a .FLV which ran just fine.

I think i need some separate library to be able to encode .WMV but i haven't sourced those yet.

As far as bandwidth and storage are concerned i'm fine.
My main concern would be the encoding as it's obviously cpu intensive.
I won't be hosting it on a dedicated box to begin with, if it became popular and was generating some cash then i would move it.

I wouldn't be against allowing users encode the video themselves and simply upload it.
In fact i was thinking that i would only allow one encoded video per user per day but if they want to upload more they could encode it themselves and upload it.

Killian

Sniipe

Who are u hosting with, cause if they catch u using the CPU a lot they will suspend you or kick you off.
Did u find a good site on encoding using FFMPEG? I'm a little bit behind u but basically doing the same thing.