Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Video transcoding service

[Xandrios]

Not really sure in which subforum to put this, so I hope this is right.

I'm looking for a video transcoding service. File format X to Flash VP-6 with a custom bitrate, preferably 2-pass. For a while I have been doing it myself on one of my boxes using ffmpeg but honestly, its a pain to integrate it properly and the video quality is not as good as it should be either. I dont think there are other reasonably priced linux tools to do this properly?

There are some services that can do this through an API. That is exactly what I need, easy to integrate and doesnt require fixing stuff when it breaks down for whatever reason. Does anybody have experiences with any of those? The few that I found either don't reply to a sales email or a test video I uploaded to them didnt run properly. Any experiences with actual working services?

[digdugdog]

softlayer has a transcoding service. I'm not sure if it'll meet your needs though.

[Xandrios]

Thanks It seems that this service is only for Softlayer customers (which i am not) and doesnt provide an API to integrate it into my apps. Would have been a nice option otherwise indeed!

[VideoPR]

The paid options are all quite expensive and the ones available for free pretty much suck.

You'll need to customize the settings of ffmpeg/mencoder and tweak your server as well to get optimum results.

[Xandrios]

Well it depends how you define expensive. For a youtube like site it might quickly be too much, but I am only using it for a couple videos a day.

Ive been fiddling with ffmpeg but it seems to be pretty stubborn. For example it doesnt take all mpeg1 files, it does take most, but not all. Do you have any suggestions on how to 'tweak' ffmpeg?

[Gary4gar]

best place to ask about ffmpeg is their mailing list. and don't forget to read the docs.

I would suggest get a powerful machine and run cronjobs for conversion. this machine is not necessary from a hosting provider

[Xandrios]

Thanks. I might look into recompiling ffmpeg, but honestly getting the codec libs to work is a pain and kinda over the top for the few videos that I want to convert.

I just tried the On2 Cloud conversion..and am pretty disappointed. 2 out of 3 videos failed since it was unable to read the input format (avi) and one got three times larger than it should have been (1 minute of video at 500kbit shouldnt be 16.5MB). Too bad since these guys are supposed to be the 'pro's'.

Any other services that I could try?

[Gary4gar]

what videos are those? which formats? how much is the size?
if its a one time job only, Perhaps i can help you. I do have ffmpeg installed on my VPS.