Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : Streaming movies

[John[H4Y]]

Hello,
I've got a client who we designed a CMS system for. He can upload videos and assign permissions to them for users to download. He added on (after the fact) that he did not want the movies downloadable and only to stream in the browser. The users are not very technical so there does not have to be huge security, but I am wondering if something exists for PHP that is basically an "all-in-one" streamer. I need a simple way to stream .flv, .mpg, .avi, .wmv, etc in the browser. I am hoping there is a script or something that uses ffmpeg that is easy to setup for this for all file types (something that will maybe auto-detect the size of the movie and adjust the movie player accordingly, etc)? ANy ideas?

[eeadmin]

Not sure there is a panacea for this. The first thing is you need a server that will stream. You can set up some php scripts to do that something like xmoov http://stream.xmoov.com/ should work. Eventually you will want to move on to a dedicated video streaming. Then you need a player to control the videos. The player we use is JWplayer. It is a flash player that is easy to set up. If you need encoding as well there is a whole new set of issues to do that on the fly.

Good Luck

[John[H4Y]]

Maybe I didn't explain this well. The client just uploads the full .flv or .wmv or .mpeg files and I am looking for a PHP script whose purpose is simply to play them in-browser. For instance, to play an .flv file, I would have to manually code it to recognize the .flv and then load a flash applet. For Windows media, I would have to have it load an in-browser media player. I just was wondering if something exists that can auto-detect the file types and play them in-browser rather than giving the user the ability to download the files.

[eeadmin]

Sorry I misunderstood. You are just looking for a way to sort out the progressive download. I'd like to see if anybody has a clever solution for this.

[John[H4Y]]

Not your fault that you mis-understood - It was a bad description. Basically, I am just looking for something to save time. For example, an FLV file, you would normally put in the Flash Applet code to play the movie in browser.. I am just hoping there is a script out there that can auto-format different types of media for in-browser playback. For example, just access it like so:

http://yourdomain.com/playvids/coolm...file=test1.flv

It sees the .flv extension and then displays the media in the browser accordingly. If it sees other extensions, it auto-formats an in-browser player. Or may something using ffmpeg to convert most filetypes to a single standard type to play in the browser.. Any other thoughts on this?

[hamdusa]

I think it is difficult to find a solution in php because php is not best option here (php default maximum_execution_time is 30 seconds - although it can be changed).

[eeadmin]

Maybe there is something you can do in the header to force the mime type. Of course, I think this would still depend on the client/browser having the ability to interpret the mime types. It is a bit of guess, but I hope it helps.