Flowplayer 3 and OpenX: working like a charm (Video Commercials) Created Dec 20, 2008

WOW!!! Very cool. Any info or a quick paste of the js code used would be great.

When I get a minute I will throw openx on a centos box and check it out.

TY

P.S. what vms/cms is that your using?

Hey Edge,

The CMS is fully custom, I've been working on it for the last few weeks as I wanted something that JUST did what I needed, videos. It pretty much boils down to a simple admin panel, a few mysql tables and then some frontend templates.

I'll start writing up the main tut this week, but once I figured out you could use XML code in the banner code section of openx (i.e. instead of
The rest is the pure-js setup of FP to force the pre-roll/post roll. It's great to see two open-source products coming together perfectly to offer similiar performance to solutions costing $$,$$$

Ahh very nice. Not many people build their own cms/vms's. I've attempted it and failed "badly lol" due to security issues mostly.

Does your vms use server side processing of videos? With ffmpeg or mencoder?

Hey,

This site actually used to be WP, but was modified so much that it felt arkward to use, and wasn't very efficient from an admin pov.

It uses background processing with ffmpeg/flvtool2. I set up a processing queue which all relies on the mysql DB. Ive been writing up this into a bit of a guide, hopefully as much of a modular 'add on' to other peoples PHP sites as possible.

Ahh so much to do, so little time...

Have you gone the mencoder or ffmpeg route?

cheers

I use ffmpeg but not on any of my live servers. I'm still testing the output of a few formats, mainly f4v.

Currently I encode locally using the cs4 media encoder then upload emm. The vp6 blows flv1 away with both filesize and quality.

I've tried mencoder but it puke's on a few filetypes. I got sick of dealing with it.

So your cms is wp based just heavily rebuilt?

Hey edge,

The website (i.e. fightnightlive.co.uk) used to run on WP, and offered basically he same functionality to the user as the new site I've built, however WP was a lot slower to use from the admin backend for the functions I needed. i.e. instead of having to set template variables for each video post in WP, I now have dedicated input fields for them.

Also, WP is a LOT of lines of code, and usually trying to change one little thing or customise one thing can mean a LOT of code to get through. I know there's the plugin API but it's still a lot of hassle.

I ussually remake a fresh CMS for each site, geared exactly towards the functions needed of that site, and with my own engine for adding extra features, or 'plugins'.

RE quality, I agree ffmpeg can be dire compared to a lot of good desktop convertors, but the costs involved on getting that quality serverside is a little beyond this site! :P

Right now I know I'm wasting b/w on bloated filesizes with the converted videos, but the script is still storing all the original uploaded videos (non-public accessible) so on adding any better conversion I can simply loop through the collection and re-encode better copies.

... it's starting to be a bitch on the HDD space though :P

@tero - thanks for the compliment :) I'd also love to try and work this to be a flash plugin, and I know it should be very doable. I just haven't ever looked into AS3 or Flash at all....I'll be more than helpful to work with someone who could make this into a Flash plugin though? Im sure the openx community would send commercial license sales through the roof with this as a built in feature of the commercial version!

Hey,

Yea wordpress is extremely nasty to sql servers. Its a great starting point but for high traffic its just not a option unless you throw serous hardware at it. Possibly separate db and web servers. Reminds me of joomla.

As for ffmpeg, I'm working on some very high quality / small file size encodes atm. After I test it a bit more I'll send it along.

If you have a fight movie that's not encoded throw me a link. I'll download it and encode it via ffmpeg then post a link for you to grab it and check it out.

Hey edge,

RE: Nasty to SQL servers.

True unless you happen to be a sysadmin who can tweak the wordpress mysqlDB structure to eliminate slow queries, and tweak the httpd and mySQLD daemons to get the most from your platform.

If you are not using a shared hosting platform, let me know I will be glad to help.

For reference you can see my write up on reducing the memory footprint of apache and increasing the max threads here:http://www.saiweb.co.uk/linux/optimizing-apache-for-high-load-sites-part-3

Part 3 contains links to parts 1 and 2.

Good stuff Liam! We are planning to have advertising support in one way or another in Flowplayer - but you made the head start yourself. Very glad that you are pleased with the API.

I see you have published this on our contest too - seem's like a winner at this point...

refined the 'your video will begin in...' content in the 'content' plugin as I realized it would still count down even if the video pre-roll was buffering...

Also, just added interstitial's to the video too. These are mainly just CSS/jQuery

example:
http://www.fightnightlive.co.uk/show-13/trevor-ambrose-classic-compilation/

keen to hear if it looks ok on IE versions though as Im Mac only :P

@edge - I made a post on ffmpeg settings with a tester video for playing with
http://flowplayer.org/forum/7/12671

Hey

I think your Flowplayer advertising implementation is absolutely brilliant, and I'd love to do that myself. Just wondering -- what's "Adsnap"? Is that your OpenX server?

Oh and also, what webhost/CDN are you using? I've never heard of someone using FFMPEG on their own site like that. (Hey, I'm considering just running the whole thing from Blip.tv, grabbing the FLV urls with the API! :P)

RE Adsnap.co.uk

Adsnap.co.uk is the site I've setup to act as my adserver. I'm technically working across two companies:

Adsnap.co.uk and the openX server is owner by 1 company, so they are respnsible for selling the ads (for this website and others)

FightnightLive.co.uk is just one publisher of Adsnap.co.uk

RE webhost

My providing is RapidVPS and I'm always quick to recommend them! I've been with them nearly 2 years and I've never come across a company with better prices, quality or support when it comes to web hosting. They really do offer a 24/7 team of system admins and I've learnt a great deal about managing linux server environments from them over the time I've been with them.

My videos are delivered through a CDN which is simpleCDN. They are also the same CDN that the Flowplayer.org site uses. Probabaly the cheapest bandwidth prices on the net....

If your interested in setting up the Adserver with your site, drop me an email via:
http://GoodingsWeb.com

Cool, cool.

Sorry for the late reply.

I've never thought of using OpenX for video advertising before, that's pretty neat.

I like the video skin thing too!

Hi:

Did you ever have a chance to write up the tutorial that you mentioned?

This is exactly what I'm needing, but I don't have any idea how to do it without some guidance!

Thanks in advance.

JB

Hi JB,

I held off on at as my technique involves the use of PHP and JS and the Flowplayer team are looking at a pure flash plugin solution (which I have no knowledge of).

The basic rundown though:

Put XML code into openx
Use XML-RPC delivery method onto a PHP file on your site
Use simpleXML to parse the XML data
Insert the data (saved as PHP variables) into a dynamic JS external config file

In practice, this all goes into one file:

config.js.php

Include it as regular js
<script src="config.js.php"....>

Do all the work in the config.js.php file and then send the mime header type as javascript. Then follow the flowplayer demo on how to use an external javascript file for configuration.

Hi,

Could I run my own ads on visitor's site/blog which embeds my video?

thank you