Web Video Solutions: Optimized Video Content for Media Portals

Optimized Video Content for Media Portals

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building optimized interactiveweb video solutions

Table of Contents

www.softheme.com Outsourcing to Softheme™ Web Video: Building Optimized Interactive Web Video Solutions

Web Video: Building Optimized Interactive Web Video Solutions

System Architecture 3-servers structure

media content processing

Video Formats Conversion Thumbnails Video Distribution

Web Video: Building Optimized Interactive Web Video Solutions

With growing popularity of video sharing networks, video portals become an essential part of marketing web activities.

While it is relatively easy and straightforward to incorporate a video player into the website showing 10 to 20 video clips, the real challenge is to develop a scalable video sharing portal with up to 10k visitors daily, tons of indexed movies with multiple comments to them, advanced search, categorization, tags, and, the most important – minimum time to load the page with video content.


In this presentation we share our experience on how to efficiently structure video streams and servers for a medium-to-large size video sharing portal.

System Architecture

1. Three-servers structure:

Front end – web server

Media content conversion – a server dedicated to converting the video from custom formats to a unified system format

Data storage – a server responsible for storing and distributing media content


Web Server Media Format Converter Data Storage

System Architecture The servers share disk space for simple and effective data exchange.

Servers should be arranged physically at the same data center.

Network File System protocol

User Datagram Protocol


Protocols used for data sharing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System_(protocol)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol

System Architecture

2. Media content processing.

Standard way to implement the media content processing:


• Video File• Additional

information

User

• Video File• Additional

information

Web Server• Video File• Converted

video files

Media Format Converter

• Converted video files

Data Storage• Video

Streaming

User

System ArchitectureOptimization of the standard media content processing approach:


• Additional information

• Video File

User

• Additional information

Web Server• Video File• Converted

video files

Media Format Converter

• Converted video files

Data Storage• Video

Streaming

User

Security check should be conducted on the Media Format Converter level.

Video Formats Conversion


Popular video formats:

ASF MPEG FLV OGG

FLV format – H264 video standard – provides the best video quality,keeping the file size small.

Note that: FLV format requires Adobe Flash Player 10+



Video clips to FLV format converting tools:Name Pros Cons Use

FFmpeg 1• Free (LGPL)• Supports Win/Linux/Mac

• Time consuming video processing• If the video aspect ratio has been changed, the result video file could be damaged

Two steps:Step 1: High Bitrate conversionStep 2: Low Bitrate conversion Result: acceptable quality, small file size

MEncoder 2

• Freeware• FFmpeg-based• Fast conversion procedure• Supports conversion to Win formats: wmv, mpeg

The resulting files’ quality is low

Use with FFmpeg for the 1st step of the conversion procedure when converting to Win formats

QuickTime 3• Developed by Apple• Minimal result file size• Excellent quality

Does not allow simultaneous conversion of multiple files

Adobe Flash Media Server 4

• Solution for streaming video

Runs on Win and Mac platforms Use Flash Media Encoder

1 - http://www.ffmpeg.org/ 2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEncoder 3 - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/player/ 4 - http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/

http://www.ffmpeg.org/

http://www.ffmpeg.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEncoder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEncoder

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/player/

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/player/

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/



Solutions for video meta data management:

Name Use

Yamdi 1 Freeware. Manages width, height, length, key frames, etc.

ImageMagick 2

Freeware. The software is used to manage images (for example thumbnails for video).

Note: MEncoder is used with some its modules in order to improve the video quality within a converting.

1 - http://yamdi.sourceforge.net/

2 - http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

http://yamdi.sourceforge.net/

http://yamdi.sourceforge.net/

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php



List of multimedia formats that can be converted into FLV (H264):Name Meaning Name Meaning

3g2 3GP2 format crc CRC testing format

3gp 3GP format daud D-Cinema audio format

RoQ raw id RoQ format dirac raw Dirac

ac3 raw AC-3 dnxhd raw DNxHD (SMPTE VC-3)

adts ADTS AAC dts raw DTS

aiff Audio IFF dv DV video format

alaw PCM A-law format dvd MPEG-2 PS format (DVD VOB)

alsa ALSA audio output eac3 raw E-AC-3

amr 3GPP AMR file format f32be PCM 32 bit floating-point big-endian format

asf ASF format f32le PCM 32 bit floating-point little-endian format

asf_stream ASF format f64be PCM 64 bit floating-point big-endian format

ass SSA/ASS format f64le PCM 64 bit floating-point little-endian format

au SUN AU format ffm FFM (FFserver live feed) format

avi AVI format flac raw FLAC

avm2 Flash 9 (AVM2) format flv FLV format




framecrc framecrc testing format mp2 MPEG audio layer 2

gif GIF Animation mp3 MPEG audio layer 3

gxf GXF format mp4 MP4 format

h261 raw H.261 mpeg MPEG-1 System format

h263 raw H.263 mpeg1video raw MPEG-1 video

h264 raw H.264 video format mpeg2video raw MPEG-2 video

image2 image2 sequence mpegts MPEG-2 transport stream format

image2pipe piped image2 sequence mpjpeg MIME multipart JPEG format

ipod iPod H.264 MP4 format mulaw PCM mu-law format

m4v raw MPEG-4 video format mxf Material eXchange Format

matroska Matroska file format mxf_d10 Material eXchange Format, D-10 Mapping

mjpeg raw MJPEG video null raw null video format

mlp raw MLP nut NUT format

mmf Yamaha SMAF ogg Ogg

mov MOV format oss Open Sound System playback




psp PSP MP4 format swf Flash format

rawvideo raw video format truehd raw TrueHD

rcv VC-1 test bitstream u16be PCM unsigned 16 bit big-endian format

rm RealMedia format u16le PCM unsigned 16 bit little-endian format

rtp RTP output format u24be PCM unsigned 24 bit big-endian format

s16be PCM signed 16 bit big-endian format u24le PCM unsigned 24 bit little-endian format

s16le PCM signed 16 bit little-endian format u32be PCM unsigned 32 bit big-endian format

s24be PCM signed 24 bit big-endian format u32le PCM unsigned 32 bit little-endian format

s24le PCM signed 24 bit little-endian format u8 PCM unsigned 8 bit format

s32be PCM signed 32 bit big-endian format vcd MPEG-1 System format (VCD)

s32le PCM signed 32 bit little-endian format vob MPEG-2 PS format (VOB)

s8 PCM signed 8 bit format voc Creative Voice file format

sox SoX native format wav WAV format

spdif IEC958 - S/PDIF (IEC-61937) yuv4mpegpipe YUV4MPEG pipe format

svcd MPEG-2 PS format (VOB)

Thumbnails

Required: custom image size realistic proportions acceptable picture

quality minimal file size


1. Identify a list of pointers to the key frames

2. Save the selected key frames using FFmpeg

3. Resize the key frames using ImageMagick

Video Distribution Distributing video from Data Storage

Delivering video files using:

HTTP – what is it?


HTTP streaming or HTTP delivery. HTTP means Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, and is the same protocol used to deliver web pages. For this reason it is easy to set up and use on almost any website, without requiring additional software or special hosting plans.

RTMP – what is it?

Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) is a protocol developed by Adobe Systems for streaming audio, video and data over the Internet, between a Flash player and a server.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Messaging_Protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

Thank you!

2010 | Softheme Team | Kyiv, Ukraine | Software Outsourcing Solutions

www.softheme.com » Outsourcing to Softheme™

Questions? → [email protected]

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Web Video Solutions: Optimized Video Content for Media Portals