Creating our own Video Streeming Internal Server

[BKGarry]

Hello all,

 

I have been going around in cirlces a bit here, our staff make some very good video tutorials here, but they save them all in raw AVI format (averaging on 1gb in size) as you can imagine this is a big use on space and resources, especially when a group of students try to play them for indivudual learning.

 

I have come up with the idea (just by myself at the moment) to use our old Wordpress server (very low usage, and running ubuntu) to host a Video Streeming service (internally) in the style of YouTube, thus converting the files into nice small FLVs and paying them nicely for the students.

 

I have tried to install VIMP but it just refuses to encode them properly etc etc and was a pig to even get to work nicely within the webserver.

 

I was wondering, does anyone else have any suggestions on what I could use to set this up?

 

Any suggestions are welcome (I am already expecting the get staff to convert the files to something smaller)

[JJanisch]

This seems a little overkill, as the service would have to convert the videos again and you might as well deal with the core problem instead. I would recommend you telling them to use H.264 instead of AVI and you'll see the files drop significantly in size without much quality loss at all. Our AV Tech was making 12 minute videos (with low picture quality) and didn't bat an eye lid at them being 1.6GB in size. After changing the encoding method that same file is now 240MB and you can't tell which is which! Of course there are other encoding methods you could try as well, but I can confirm H.264 works great on (at least our) Windows Media Player.

[AngryTechnician]

phpMotion has been discussed in the past for this sort of thing, and I'm also hearing good things about MediaCore recently. I think we have users of both on here who should be able to give more informed opinions.

[JJanisch]

If you can't specify your encoder to save in an .avi format (I believe its mp4 as standard (?)), I recommend you use "Pazera Free MP4 to AVI Converter" in any case of incompatibility (such as ClickView, which I only assume you don't have)

[JJanisch]

... and I'm also hearing good things about MediaCore recently ...

 

That looks amazing, I'll have to consider integrating that with one of my sites! Cheers

[InterwebsGuy]

We considered doing something like this; we looked into using Microsoft Expression Encoder and co to stream video clips. IRC it uses IIS to do so.

We didn't go down that route in the end though, maybe it is something we'll investigate again in the future.

 

Also, if you have Google Apps, you get Google Video as part of the package, though it is a bit naff.

[BKGarry]

Thank you all,

 

Probably going to look into MediaCore first, I will let you know how i get on

[bossman]

@JJanisch:

 

Be warned about Mediacore in that it will only allow file sizes up to 300mb fro the free version, we had it running and tested but threw errors when the file size was above 300mb.

 

Fantastic piece of sofware for free though.

 

I think you can purchase it although it maybe hosted by a third party.

[pete]

@JJanisch:

 

Be warned about Mediacore in that it will only allow file sizes up to 300mb fro the free version, we had it running and tested but threw errors when the file size was above 300mb.

 

It does handle files above 300mb, you just need to a) change a setting and b) find the magical flash/browser combo that ensures their uploader doesn't fall over (Chrome IME).

 

The more pressing issue is I get that the Open Source version looks pretty abandoned. I get the impression that's it's an open source project that really wishes it was closed source now.