By jbrown on

OpenPackage Software has begun development of an OSS (open source software) Flash video module for Drupal. The primary objective of this software is to enable any Drupal website to have YouTube-style functionality with complete codec compatibility, including encoding to VP6 (the highest quality Flash codec), without the need to purchase video decoding / encoding software. This is achieved through the use of the OSS packages MPlayer and ffmpeg, along with the free binary codec pack provided by MPlayer.

Full instructions on how to setup MPlayer and ffmpeg will be provided for Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian and Gentoo. Only IA-32 and x86-64 architectures have high codec availability. It can be especially tricky to install MPlayer's binary codecs on x86-64, so this will covered in depth.

Our development of this module is being funded through the use of bounties (using the ChipIn system). Initially, the module will be developed in two phases, version 1 and version 2 (each with its own bounty of $8000 USD). Once these have been completed, various other additions to the module (see below) will be implemented in the order that their respective bounties are fulfilled.

Every feature implemented will be fully configurable via a comprehensive settings page, e.g. bitrate, frames per second, etc...

The module has already been developed to a functional level, as a proof of concept, providing compatibility with all major codecs including Windows Media Video 9. The module is installed on this website for demonstration and testing purposes. You can view uploaded videos and submit your own. The module is not yet encoding to VP6, so although the quality is very good, it will get even better (equal to YouTube).

The following codecs are supported:

  • MPEG-1 (VCD) and MPEG-2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video
  • MPEG-4 in all variants including DivX Only local images are allowed., OpenDivX (DivX4),
    DivX 5 (Pro), XviD
  • Windows Media Video 7/8 (WMV1/2)
  • Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3) (using x86 DLL)
  • RealVideo 1.0, 2.0 (G2)
  • RealVideo 3.0 (RP8), 4.0 (RP9) (using Real libraries)
  • Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3), Cinepak, RPZA and other QuickTime codecs
  • DV video
  • 3ivx
  • Intel Indeo3 (3.1, 3.2)
  • Intel Indeo 4.1 and 5.0 (using x86 DLL or XAnim codecs)
  • VIVO 1.0, 2.0, I263 and other H.263(+) variants (using x86 DLL)
  • MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2 and other hardware formats
  • FLI/FLC
  • HuffYUV
  • various old simple RLE-like formats

Once the bounty for version 1 has been met, the source code for the module will be released in its current form and a CVS account on drupal.org will be applied for. The project will be managed through openpackage.biz until a drupal.org CVS account has been obtained.

Not all the details have been fleshed out. Investor input is extremely important in defining exactly what form this module should take. Please make your views known on the relevant pages.

All code will be released under the GPL Version 2.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x, Drupal 5.x

Comments

jnv106’s picture

jnv106 commented

This is awesome! I love drupal's cutting edge-ness...

Where will be the raw video and transcoded video be stored and hosted ?
Would it make sense to do heavy transcoding on the same physical server where my CMS instance is running ?

I think they should be configured to use something else or some other server.

jbrown’s picture

jbrown commented

To begin with, the videos will be encoded and stored on the host drupal is running on. There is a bounty in place on the site for the development of an 'external storage provider' feature that would enable videos to be transferred elsewhere (e.g. amazon s3 or akamai) once they have been encoded.

For a small site, it wouldn't be too bad transcoding the video on the same host, because it only takes a couple of minutes on a decent processor to transcode a video that is a few minutes long. You would need to be transcoding an awful lot of video to really start hammering the server. There will be an option where it will be possible to set the unix 'nice' value of the encoding process. This will enable it to temporarily throttle off when apache needs to serve a page.

I will be creating another bounty for a feature that would be able to transfer the video to one of a number of machines in a server farm for encoding.

You should try uploading a video @ http://openpackage.biz/submit-video . You don't need to register.

I have reduced the bounty required for the module to be made open source to $800. Any contribution, no matter how small would be greatly appreciated to get the ball rolling. The sooner I can work full time on this, the sooner I'll have great features rolling out.

Jonny

--
Jonathan Brown
http://jonathanpatrick.me/

arthurf’s picture

arthurf commented

I've been working on various video solutions on drupal. Because video and storage are both complicated and require a fair bit of specific kinds of configuration, I'm proposing a new module: Media Mover which I've been developing. While it's far from done, it implements a hook system for other modules to act as file harvesters, file processors, and file storage modules. This creates a plugable system to process files in multiple ways.

I'm working to get the code cleaned up so that other people can start using it, but as it stands i have an integration with ffmpeg and amazon's s3 already running.

vm’s picture

vm commented

I'd like to see support for VP7 as well as VP6.

jbrown’s picture

jbrown commented

Can flash play VP7?

--
Jonathan Brown
http://jonathanpatrick.me/

vm’s picture

vm commented

yes. VP7 from on2 technologies. The clarity and compression is much better the VP6. VP7 uses dual layers. Most of the movie trailers you see on the net are done in VP7.

jbrown’s picture

jbrown commented

Yeah - I think its a really good idea to have a separate media mover module.

--
Jonathan Brown
http://jonathanpatrick.me/

scarecrow-rye’s picture

scarecrow-rye commented

These two posts are certainly worth a read through...

1) http://www.tunaspecial.com/?p=162
2) http://www.tunaspecial.com/?p=181

agilpwc’s picture

agilpwc commented

Seems like VideoEgg can already do most of this stuff.

I've created a rough solution integrating videoegg into video module. You can find it here http://drupal.org/node/88198

ajwwong’s picture

ajwwong commented

Check this Drupal site. Might save you some time.

http://drupal.org/node/88456

Albert
Esalen Alumni Group

nyumbani_yangu’s picture

nyumbani_yangu commented

Hey mate,

I tried installing your module. Just copied everything into a folder in /modules/VideoEggModule/*
but when I try , as administrator, to access , ?q=admin/modules I get the follwing error:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ')' in C:\Programmi\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\kenmaff\modules\VideoEggModule\videoegg.module on line 112

It doesn't look like a complicated error, but nevertheless, it would be nice to have a functional module without having to tweak/hack anything.

Now, I am running drupal 4.7.x on mysql 4.1 (PHP 4)

Any ideas? Any recent renamed and functioning versions of the module? CVS?

Cheers

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci

davecormier’s picture

davecormier commented

Have been looking at this solution http://wcope.wordpress.com/2007/01/04/phpvideo-release-01-beta/#comment-9

kirie’s picture

kirie commented

Hello,

This seems like an awesome idea! Are there any updates?