Oct 01
If you are planning to publish video on your website you first need to Encode your video file for Windows Media, Real Player or Apple Quicktime formats so that they can be played smoothly in web browser. Once you encode your video file you just need to upload these files on a server running streaming media software so that all your video files can be delivered to all webusers.
You can consider a streaming server as a special server which is responsible for ? true streaming ? True streaming have following advantages as :
- They are specially designed for handling large traffic for all video embedded sites.
- They can detect users internet connection speed and will accordingly send data at your user end.
- They are capable for broadcasting LIVE VIDEO events such as Live Sports Matches, Live Shows, Live Presentations etc?
You have two different ways for getting a Streaming server, either you purchase/lease your own dedicated server and set it for streaming video files by installing some video streaming software or you can signup with a host offering you video streaming hosting package for fixed rent.
If you are planning to get a standalone server which can be used as streaming server then you need to get and install some streaming server software on your server or on your existing server. You have range of Streaming softwares which can be installed on both Linux and Windows Hosting Server platforms.
Following are most common video streaming software which are widely used by all webmasters
*) Helix Universal Server from RealNetworks : This server supports a variety of formats, including RealMedia, Windows Media, Quicktime and MPEG-4.
*) Apple Quicktime Streaming Server : Support few video formats which includes MPEG-4 and 3GPP.
*) Macromedia Communication Server : Commonly used for all Flash-based video and interactive multimedia presentations.
Each of above streaming technologies have their own proprietary server and types of media files that they use. Each have their own corresponding server designed to stream files in a preferred formats.
Sep 24
Sometimes you may face issues with playing Flash embedded videos, either they will not play or they will play but without sound which can be very irritating. This may be due to your web browser settings or may be due to older version of Flash eg YouTube embedded videos does not play smoothly in Flash 9. So if you are facing such problem you may just try to update registry, update your Flash player settings and also sound settings of your computer. But if still your problem is not solved and you are not getting audio for your flash embedded videos then final solution would be by ditching Flash 9 and going straight to the Flash 10 Beta I am sure now you can get sound and video playing smoothly with the flash player from youtube videos, embedded videos for Firefox and Chrome webbrowsers.
Sep 20
If you have many flv flash video format video files which you want to convert to some other video format in one go then you can use following bash script developed by Jake Hilton
If you are using ffmpeg on your dedicated server then you can use below bash script for batch convert of flv files to other required video format.
#!/bin/sh
for f in *.flv;
do
echo “Processing $f”
ffmpeg -i “$f” -target ntsc-dvd “${f%.flv}.mpg”
done
Thus using above script all flash video files having flv extension will get converted into a ntsc dvd format with file extension mpg. You can tweak it for required video format you need.
Vote of thanks to Jake Hilton http://www.jakehilton.com/?q=node/41 for sharing such excellent script
Sep 02
If you have installed eAccelerator on your video hosting server for reducing server load and to increase speed of PHP code execution by optimizing PHP scripts then some times you may get binary files instead of video file while browsing video files on your website then you will have to insert following code in .htaccess file of your video server hosting account.
========== Insert below code in .htaccess file ==========
php_flag eaccelerator.enable 0
php_flag eaccelerator.optimizer 0
==================================================
By inserting above code in .htaccess file such problem should get solved.
About eAccelerator : eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelarator, optimizer, and dynamic content cache. It will increase performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, thus the overhead of compiling scripts is almost completely eliminated which will reduces server load and will increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times.
