FFMpeg binary

FFMpeg is a program that takes a media file of one type and converts it into another. Depending upon what codecs your machine has installed it can be used to convert videos and sound, in addition to that it can change aspect ratios, sound/video quality etc.

It sounds like you need this to be installed on your *nix box before you can use this youtube clone. What sort of hosting do you have? If it's shared I would very much doubt your hosts will allow you to have access to FFMpeg: video processing is very processor-intensive stuff.

If you've got root access to your web server and are allowed to install whatever you like then let us know and we can work out how to install it (probably very easy!)

If I run [incode]ffmpeg --formats[/incode] on my computer (an Ubuntu box) it displays all the supported formats (for my machine: it depends upon what you've got installed). Here's the result:

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So these are all the different formats it can convert between. This clone (and probably YouTube themselves) use FFMPeg to convert the file uploaded to them into the file users watch in that little Flash video: it's used to make sure every video served from YouTube is in the same format.

Hope this helps, and sorry for double-posting!

very helpful thanks. I have spoken to my host and they dont have it installed on shared hosting however he gave the impression i can try and install if i like. Been reading and you can give the path to "Lame" i think it is to the ffmepg class if it is in the same directory?

You could just copy and run it on a shared host, if they haven't applied strict security policies (they probably ought to). You would need to similarly copy all dependencies, and set your path environment variable to expose the new files. That's not necessarily a limitation.

What could stop you, as Jeeves mentioned, is that FFmpeg processes frequently aren't cheap. When it occupies resources in a burst, it will interfere with the performance of other processes belonging to your neighbours on the server. This might be acceptable if your host allows burstable resource usage, but even then you risk overusing your privileges with something like FFmpeg.

hOW DO I COPY AND COMPILE THIS THING THEN. Where can i download it? DO i have to compile it first on my computer?

can someone tell me how i could install ffmpeg inside the root directory?

Just finally getting back to this thread. Sorry for not looking at it sooner, but it's sort of gone a bit beyond my capabilities!

You would get FFMPEG from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/ Your first trouble is going to be compiling, or installing from an appropriate package without root access (or Admin in Windows jargon).

Am assuming your used to Windows here, so will try to explain your problem in those terms:

Imagine you have a Windows box, but only have access to your 'My Documents' directory. You have one of those MSI 'Windows Installer' files for installing FFMPEG, but as you only have access to your 'My Documents' this is useless.

You also have the source code to FFMPEG, which you could copy over to that 'My Documents' directory and compile it (i.e. make an executable file that you can use) from there. Problem is FFMPEG needs multimedia codecs, e.g. MPEG4, AVI, WMV etc. to be installed (along with lots of other dll's) to work. As the person who installed Windows knows that it's not a multimedia machine (but a web server) they've not bothered to install any of that stuff.

Do you see the problems you're facing? Not only do you need FFMPEG, but you need all those multimedia codecs (and a lot of other libraries that probably aren't installed) on your web server.

To be honest, I don't rate your chances of getting this working on shared hosting, and even if you did the host would pull your account as soon as your site slows the server down. Hosting companies tend to put up to 200 web sites on a single server, not even (the wonderful, insanely powerful ) Linux can serve 200 web sites and encode/decode video streams at the same time.

I believe the reason your host didn't seem to be bothered if you tried yourself is because they know you'll fail. Not because you're incapable or anything: it's just a nearly impossible task!

Moving forward, if you really need this sort of functionality and freedom to use whatever software packages you like, get a dedicated Linux server with root access (so you can install whatever you like) and a host who's willing to help you out (or even install those codecs for you).

Youtube have a cluster of Linux machines for churning out video, they've got ridiculous amounts of processing power to do what they're doing. The least you need is a dedicated server (just make sure it's Linux!)

Checkout the last post on this thread. Internetking can do FFMPEG, if he can then I'm sure others can too.

You will need to get your hosts on board to do any video editing, as said: it's very processor intensive, so a host that isn't warned about what you're doing may well ban your account.

Hello again..
I have two DVD's that are in the VOB format. I've been asked to provide them to a web site.
I read this forum and see that the questions was asked about running VOB files from the HOST..correct?
If so, that's not what I would rather do. I was thinking more of conversion to AVI, WMV, etc. and then
uploading the converted file to the host to be accessed with one of the player programs out there.

Is there an applet that will do the conversion smoothly; that I could find for $$ or free?
Is what I want to do a reasonable thing?
As always,
Thank you for your advice
Rick (Shobuz99)

shobuz99 wrote: I read this forum and see that the questions was asked about running VOB files from the HOST..correct?

The process we're talking about can be performed on any computer (although we're assuming it's running GNU/Linux). Naturally with Linux all the conversion tools are available for Free (as in freedom to do what you want with them), I am certain there are freeware applications available for Windows that will do the same things.

Have you tried the usual free/shareware application repositories like Tucows? The items returned in this search look quite useful. Am not able to recommend anything as am not a Windows user, maybe someone else could offer a recommendation?

if you want an answer from lay man's point go for wikipedia.