Technology Digest

As most of you know, Wordpress released the video framework plugin that powers their new Videopress website. I’ve used the installation instructions on a server running CentOS and also on a server running Ubuntu. Below are the steps I took to get the awesome plugin implemented. However, your installation of FFMPEG may be different according to what kind of Linux Distro you are using.

To install FFMPEG on CentOS, you will need to follow the instructions posted here: http://www.php-architect.com/blog/2008/07/01/installing-ffmpeg-php-on-centos-5/

To install FFMPEG on Ubuntu, you can follow the installation instructions found in the wordpress video framework package or follow the installation instructions above. Either way, I suggest installing the ffmpeg and ffmpeg-php packages from above, as well as the current snapshot of x264.

However, there is one caveat. You can follow both the instructions above up until you get to the x264 and FFMPEG install. In order to get it working on my servers, I had to make some adjustments. In the installation instructions, you are supposed to configure x264 and FFMPEG with –enable-shared. By doing so, you will need to run the command /sbin/ldconfig, which is stated in the instructions. However, for my installs, that doesn’t work. So what I did is use the following config without the –enable-shared:

For x264, I used: ./configure –enable-pthread –prefix=/usr && make && make install

For ffmpeg, I used: ./configure –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-nonfree –enable-postproc –enable-libfaad –enable-avfilter –enable-pthreads –enable-libx264 –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libfaac –disable-ffserver –disable-ffplay –enable-libtheora –prefix=/usr && make && make install

Then I did the following from the instructions without the /sbin/fdconfig command.
echo “/usr/local/lib” >> /etc/ld.so.conf
make tools/qt-faststart
mv tools/qt-faststart /usr/bin

Now, because I am using WPMU, the files as is do not work for me. I needed to figure out a way for other users to basically have their own transcoding and file servers because when users tried to upload a video file, they were denied because of permissions. So, I had to change some things so that subdomain.example.com would be the beginning url for the user’s file server and transcoding server. In video-lib.php, I had to change this:

/**
* choose a file server that is live
* CUSTOMIZE: add your own logic if there are multiple file servers
*/
function pick_fileserver( $dc = 'your_data_center' ) {
 
return 'http://myfileserver.com';
}
 
/**
* choose a transcoder that is live
* CUSTOMIZE: add your own logic if there are multiple transcoders
*/
function pick_transcoder( $dc = 'your_data_center' ) {
 
return 'http://mytranscoder.com';
 
}

to this:

/**
* choose a file server that is live
* CUSTOMIZE: add your own logic if there are multiple file servers
*/
function pick_fileserver( $dc = 'your_data_center' ) {
 
$fileserver = get_option('siteurl');
return $fileserver;
}
 
/**
* choose a transcoder that is live
* CUSTOMIZE: add your own logic if there are multiple transcoders
*/
function pick_transcoder( $dc = 'your_data_center') {
$transcoder = WP_PLUGIN_URL . "/video/video-transcoder.php";
 
return $transcoder;
 
}

Then at the of that file, I place a require line like so: require(‘/var/www/example.com/web/wp-config.php’);. Lastly, I needed some changes done to the video-xml.php file, so that the video information can be retrieved from each user’s blog. Instead of posting the changes, I have included the file for download (the code above and this file was contributed by ddmitry at the WPMU forums. Once you do the above as well as make the necessary changes in the files, then you and your users should be all set with uploaded videos to be transcoded. As mentioned by Hailin, this is not a regular plugin, so there is no backend. Just upload the video and that is it.

One more thing I should mention. When you use the command “php php video-verify-ffmpeg.php,” there is a line that you must pay particular issue to when the command runs. The line that I am speaking of is

Stream #0.0(eng): Video: wmv3, yuv420p, 320x240, 198 kb/s, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc

My server setup is different, and the above line does not match what video-transcoder.php is looking. This file is looking for “tb/r” or something like that, but my line output is “tbr”.  So, in that file, I had to change this line:

if ( preg_match( '/Stream.*Video:.* (\d+)x(\d+).* (\d+\.\d+) tb\(r\)$/', $line, $matches ) ) {

to this:

if ( preg_match( '/Stream.*Video:.* (\d+)x(\d+).* (\d+\.\d+) tbr/', $line, $matches ) ) {

If you don’t change the line to match the output, then you will get a transcoding error. I hope that this will help you. Please excuse the way that things are written. I promised a couple of people that I would get this up as soon as possible, so this is a working document, which means, things will need to be changed and or updated according to what questions people may have. When writing a post like this, you always miss a step or two. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below; I will be checking often. Also, this is a new server, if you have any issues with accessing my site or it seems slow, please let me know.

Need help installing the Wordpress Video Solution Framework plugin, hire me?

Technorati Tags: ffmpeg, videopress, x264

Tags: ffmpeg, videopress, x264

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 8:10 am and is filed under Featured, Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.