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mClip - Movie Module
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This module allows webmasters to offer a YouTube like service to their users, as well as manage collections of embedded movie clips hosted on YouTube and a variety of other sites. Some of it's main features are:-
- Categoriesed database of movie clips
- Supports embedded clips and locally hosted clips
- Uses an FLV player to play locally hosted flash movie clips
- Allows uploading and server side conversion of .mpg, .wmv etc. to flash movie format (ala YouTube)
- Full permission system to allow / deny access to movies
This module enables webmasters to add FLV formatted movies to their site and allow visitors to view them using the supplied "FlowPlayer" FLV movie player ((c) www.flowplayer.org). A copy of various FlowPlayer players are included in this module. There are probably others available.
To use FlowPlayer (or any server side FLV player) you need to encode your AVI / MPG movies into FLV. You can convert them offline (I use the excellent Riva FLV Encoder from www.rivavx.com), or, if your webhosting service supports it, you can upload and convert them online using the FFMPEG server-side processing program.
The module comes with various other movie types pre-defined, specifically the type that allow you to embed movies in a web page that are hosted elsewhere, like YouTube.
Each movie type uses HTML code to embed a viewable movie object in a web page. The HTML is included in the "type" record stored in the database and is therefore completely definable (you might want to change quality settings etc.). This HTML includes 5 "placeholders" (not applicable to all types) for the actual movie file / link data read from the database. These are:-
{player} = the filename of the FLV player (only applies to FLV movies)
{movies} = the path to wherever on your web server the movies are stored (for locally hosted movies)
{width} = the width you want the movie to be displayed (and re-sized to for uploaded and server-side processed movies)
{height} = the height you want the movie to be displayed (and re-sized to for uploaded and server-side processed movies)
{link} = the link to the movie itself
In the case of movies you host yourself you will need to supply the path to the player (FLV only) and the location of the movies files. The defaults should do fine unless you particularly want to move them elsewhere. Neither of these apply to movies hosted elsewhere (YouTube etc.) The {width} and {height} placeholders are replaced with the values you store for each type, but of course if you don't include these placeholders in the object embed HTML code they won't be used (in which case you'll probably have hard-coded these values in the HTML).
As regards uploading movies directly to your webspace, you'll almost certainly need to change some PHP settings on your server, as movies tend to be quite big and take time to upload, and PHP's default settings are probably going to be set too low. If you're on a shared hosting package you probably won't have the luxury of being able to do this, and therefore won't be able to use the upload feature, in which case you'll have to upload movies via FTP.
To process uploaded movies server-side a tool called FFMPEG is used to convert them to another format (upload .MPG and convert them to .FLV to be displayed using the FLV viewer, for example, or in other words exactly what YouTube allows you to do). To use this tool you will need a Linux server to which you have root shell access. Again, if you're on a shared hosting account you almost certainly won't have this facility. The command line string to use FFMPEG is also contained in the type record, is also completely customisable, and also contains placeholders for {width} and {height}, although in this case it will be the width / height the movie will be converted to whilst being processed. There are also 2 other placeholders, {input} and {output}, don't remove these!
Please note: I've only tested the FFMPEG tool for converting movies to FLV server-side. There may be other tools available and you could probably get them to work with this module. Also, I've only tested this on my Linux server, I've no idea how to make this all work on Windows, so don't ask! What's more, getting it all to work on Linux is like getting anything to work on Linux: "a pain in the backside!". Please refer to FFMPEG's website for more details:- http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/
To enable uploading of images and movies you'll need to ensure the following folders are writable:-
modules/Movie/images/categories
modules/Movie/images/movies
modules/Movie/images/types
modules/Movie/movies (or wherever your uploaded movies go)
modules/Movie/upload (or wherever your uploaded movies go)
For those last 2 folders, which only apply to uploaded movie types, the module uploads them to the "upload" folder and then moves them to the "movie" folder. This is to allow server-side processing as it helps to not store the processed file in the same location as the source file. These can be the same if you wish, but I'd recommend making them different. Either way both folders need to be writable.
Examples
To add an FLV movie
1) Upload the FLV file to - modules/Movie/movies
2) Go to Admin -> Movie and click the Movies tab
3) Choose Type = Flash Movies
4) Give the movie a Title
5) In Link/ID enter the name of the FLV file
6) Click Add
To add a YouTube movie
1) Go to Admin -> Movie and click the Movies tab
2) Choose Type = YouTube
3) Give the movie a Title
4) In Link/ID enter the YouTube ID of the movie
note: if the URL to the YouTube movie is:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz123
The Link/ID is:-
xyz123
5) Click Add
As you can see the module knows the URL to play YouTube movies and only needs the ID, the bit on the end of the URL. This is basically the same for all other movie types as well.
The exception is MetaCafe which uses an ID and Title. For example, if the URL to the MetaCafe movie is:-
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/123456/movie_title_here
You would need to supply a Link/ID of:-
123456/movie_title_here
To upload a .mpg (or .avi, .wmv etc.) and convert / display as FLV
2) Click the "Upload" option
3) Choose Type = Flash Movies, click "Continue"
4) Give the movie a Title
5) In Link/ID field click "Browse", find the movie you want to upload, and then click "Upload Movie"
6) Once the movie is uploaded and converted (which may take a while) fill in the rest of the form provided and click "Submit"
7) If you have set admin approval required you'll need to approve the newly uploaded movie before anyone can see it.
Categories
The module allows you to categorise movies however you like, with categories being sub-categories of others (including other sub-categories etc.) to as many levels deep as you like. You can supply an image for each movie Type, and for each Category, and for each individual movie.
The module uses a hierarchy to decide what image to use on the display pages.
* If the movie has an image associated with it, that's the one used.
* If not, if the Category has an image, that's the one used.
* If not, if the Type has an image, that's the one used.
Fields
The module allows you to add custom fields to a movie. These can be of various types, Character / Date / Numeric / Lookup lists etc. This is quite a powerful feature for extending the range of information you can store for each movie.
Options
On the Admin -> Movie -> Config tab you can set some global options for the module, including how many movies to display across and down if using grid view. The main page will also by default show the most recent movies added, the highest rated, and the most viewed. You can disable these options, and / or change how many are displayed.
Permissions
You can grant or deny access to Categories for specific user Groups. There are 2 levels of acces, users can view a Category, and the thumbnail images for the movies it contains but not view the actuall movie itself, or you can hide categories and the movies they contain completely.
Category permissions are inherited from their parent Category, if any, down to however many levels deep your categories run, so you don't have to explicitly set permissions on lots of categories, set them on one category and all it's sub-categories inherit those permissions. |
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