ah yes good point.
I am very excited about Red5. What I like about this approach is its easy implementation. A webserver and PHP - it doesn't get much easier than that.

Awesome! Now all I need is flvmdi for OS X and I'd be all set. Thanks so much for putting this together. This could be *huge* considering how many people there are out there with PHP on their boxes.

Will you marry me? *kiddin* You are a GodSend! Thank you so much. Love your site. This will help ease my anxiety while waiting for Red5.

Ahh, just checked it you got seek point position too fine.

Trying on Safari I see that every time you scroll the playing position, the browser interprets the new call to php as an error.

Also, I think is not possible to replay the video from cache if you skip some part of the video, as the stream changes everytime you change the play position you get only the remaining part and not the full video, is this right?

anyway, good stuff, keep it going ;)

Hi,

I think for a huge video, the search in the actionscript could get a big performance improvement by using binary search.

Best regards,
Burak
www.asvguy.com

Hi everybody,

I think the problem do not come from actionscript as it freezes when i try to seek to the begining of the movie.

The actionscript routine should retrieve the number of the keyframe very quickly in this case so probably it comes from PHP.

I got another question, what should happen if a user try to play a file bigger than the space defined for Temporary Internet Files. Would it crash ?

And one more question : i can't understand why the movie will be downloaded even if you seek to the end of the movie at the begining.

Kimmy question 1: I don't think your temporary internet files play any role here. If the file is too big to be cached then it probably won't be cached.
I would also assume that the 'slowness' may come from PHP but I do not know.

Question 2: What do you mean by 'classic players'? The keyframe info can be read by any player which 'listens' for the 2 new arrays. However only flvs injected with flvmdi27b will hold this info.

Hi,

i've tried ... everything works fine,
but I actually dont know how to use Buraks FLVMDI. I dont which metadata should I add to my FLVs.
With golfers.flv everything goes great. With my FLVs it doesnt SEEK.

Please tell me where is the problem
Thanks

Tom

thanks!

Kind regards

tom.krcha.com

There's a problem in the PHP portion of the script, the lines:

while (!feof($fh))
{
print (fread($fh, filesize($file)));
}

..are causing the problem. When you fread($handle, $buffer_size), the interpreter allocates $buffer_size bytes for reading. This causes a problem with large files or, to be more specific, files larger than the memory available to the PHP script. Changing the above to this:

while (!feof($fh))
{
print (fread($fh, 10000));
}

Fixes the problem. You can use a much larger buffer (up to little less than your script memomry limit), but please do some performance testing first.

i try. but not working in file 15mb. flash not send post.

I am updating the downloadable files to reflect the changes proposed by Michal. Thanks!

Fabio,
that path is a local webserver filepath, it cannot be substituted by a URL. It will only work if you have access to a webserver running PHP.

Stoem,

What should be wrong with my playear, when I drag the button on the progress bar the video doesn't go to the frame and the buffering message start blinking without stopping.

Thanks for your help,

Fabio

This is exactly what I need... But I need it for .NET. Has anyone converted the script to ASP.NET or Classic ASP?

When I try to open scrubber.fla in flash MX 2004
it says unexpectet file format. Is the zip file corruptet or ?

Really good article !
I'm on a big scholar project with it but i try to find a way to use it with flvplayback (or netstream but i don't know how to inject cue point to the flv correctly, and dynamically) ... because of netstream doesn't support cuepoint adding ! ThX

Sorry for my english ...

Sorry, one more thing. Does this work with FLVTool2? a similar tool for adding metadata for flvs? could it?

"I do not know FLVTool2 but I would imagine that it will not offer the functionality of flvmdi (which is needed to make this PHP solution work)."

For everyone's information: FLVTool2 is the first tool that implement this feature. FLVMDI followed a day after since I've explained Nicolas (from FLVMDI) how this really cool feature works. He's as soon implement it in his version for others benefit of.

just my two cents on history.
Cheers!

Technically they are either using the same technique as described in this blog entry. At best, they are also controlling the bandwidth rate at which the FLV is returned by the PHP page with the idea to not make the user waste the server's bandwidth.

Other than this, I think the link you posted looks like a great example of the usage of this PHP seeking technique that has been elaborated and enhanced by multiple peoples.

Hey Burak,

Sorry I did a mistake, your right Burak.

"FLVTool2 is the first tool that implement this feature. FLVMDI followed a day after since I've explained Nicolas (from FLVMDI) how this really cool feature works."

Should be changed to:

FLVMDI is the first tool that implement this feature. FLVTool2 followed a day after since I've explained Nicolas (from FLVTool2) how this really cool feature works.
:)

Cheers

I'm wondering if this method can be used with the FLVPlayback component in flash 8. Could someone make an example fla file if it's possible? If it's not possible could you let me know why?
Thanks

Hi ! Just a question ? What was your VP6 parameters ?
VP6 allow to put keyframes every x frames/s but object keyframe doesn't work ... so using flvmdi !
For me after using flvmdi, I have too much keyframes (double or more) but i have de keyframe object, cool ... but don't really works on the player ...

I just want your settings when you encode video in VP6 ... which is the best codec for flv (i can't return to sorenson) ...

THX and sorry for my english !

Burak --> I never say that ! FLVMDI is a very good and useful tool !

So, I think about something : it should be so good to delete all keyframes from a flv movie and to put keyframes with personnal interval (10 frames / s or 1 kframe / s ... for example) with FLVMDI ! We already can ? say me how ! :D

I just wanted to know how encode with on2 vp6 for flv streaming with php ... thanks.

Alexandre

Oh yeah,... I'd like to know if its possible to stop the full download of the video and just use these tools/scripts pretty much a streaming server. (There is a gray bar that indicates the cached download status of the full file).

In other words, I want to use this to stream my video, but when I take the video off the server, I don't want people to still be able to see the video from their cache (In other words copyright protecting it). Is this possible?

my above comment does not know the true streaming rate of the video being loaded. It would be good if someone could write a function for the php file that gets the metadata info from the video file. (I'm not a good enough programmer to do that).

Also, my bandwidth limit above of 15k/sec is pretty low. Obviously you can change it to 100k/s for videos that need more bandwidth.

actually... my goal is not to allow the user to cache the file. I want to stream the file and not allow the user to keep watching it after I remove it from the server (for copyright protection purposes).

Having this embeded as a Apache module would really rock!

Jeroen,
that is exactly what this script is supposed to do: making it possible to seek to a point in time that hasn't yet been downloaded. As you can see from the demo on the page this works well.

Hi everybody,

Concerning switching between local and PHP mode i found a working solution (still beta testing) but it is not really interesting with giant movies.

The main point is to be able to kill the php file in Temporary Internet Files folder.
Anyone has an idea on how we can make this :
From Flash ?
In the PHP script ?

Yeah. I tried headers, meta tags, all kinds of stuff. Sometimes the browser just won't reload the page.

I realize that its not going to be 100 percent. I just need to weed out the vast majority from being able to easily watch the file again, especially if their browser is too lazy to check for a new version.

However, I moved the name of the file into the php script and set the file name with an identifier from the swf file. So the URL won't contain the flv file name. In other words the url will be www.mysite.com/stream/flvprovider?name=clip1&position=2345. In the php file, clip1 equates to the flv file I want to play.

I also replaced the line in restartIt()
from...
ns.play( _vidURL );
to...
trace("play " + _phpURL + "?file=" + _vidName + "&position=" + 0;

the _vidURL is then no longer used, so I also removed the variable. (jeroen -- do this and I think your problem will be solved because now the file always comes form the php and is constantly regulated)

Since the php file streams the flv file from the backend, the actual flv file name is never seen by the viewer or their machine. If the person is smart enough to download the flv file by just entering the correct url parameters on the php file (www.mysite.com/stream/flvprovider?name=clip1&position=0), then they will be able to get the file as a download. However, they will have to save the file as an flv file and then create an swf file to play the flv file (or find an flv player). This all takes some intelligence, which weeds out a vast majority (80%) of the internet viewers.

by the way... i'm concerned about cacheing so much because I want to sell "tickets" to viewings of my video. I don't have a lot of money and I don't want to pay for streaming servers or services at this point. So this script, as I have modified it to work, is a free pseudo-streaming server!

(Thanks to flashcomguru for posting his original code, or I would not be able to do this. I am hugely appreciative as it got me started.)

I've also removed the _vidURL from the player. And modified some small things.
And i've moved the .flv file location outside the http docroot, so they're not accessible directly.
Also i've used terry's code earlyer with $bytes_per_timeframe = 256000;

The working demo i've setup now:

An flashvideo behind an pay per minute phone number.
If the viewer(caller) hangs up the phone, the flvprovider stop's sending blocks of the flv video, and the player stops playing after the current buffer ( 256000b) is empty.

It looks like it's working correctly now, and the viewer can't even watch the part he've already seen after hanging up the phone.

I'm going to clean up the code a bit tomorrow, it's kinda messy now ;)

stefan -- i sent you my code.

also, i realized my post above with the line:
trace("play " + _phpURL + "?file=" + _vidName + "&position=" + 0;

should have been (I copied the trace instead of the line that actually does the work - but the idea is the same)
ns.play( _phpURL + "?file=" + _vidName + "&position=" + 0);

make sure you use the latest version of flvmdi and use the /k switch

Hey Jeroen,
You seem to be on the same page with me...

I just realized that we can make the player even better by including whether or not the buffer is full in the variables that are sent to the php file.

In other words, we can check the current buffer time:

_bufferFull = 1;
if(ns.bufferLength<ns.bufferTime){
_bufferFull = 0; // False
}

then add it to the call to the php file:

my_ns.play( _phpURL + "?file=" + _vidName + "&position=" + positions[i] + "&bufferFull=" + _bufferFull);

The php file then has the the ability (with a check of the incoming _bufferFull variable)to remove or increase the bandidth limit until the buffer is full!! Thus, increasing the amount of feedback and making the performance for the user better.

Hi,
this is the dreamsolution for my videosite!

But (I think) I'm in the same path-trouble as demiurgu:
"when I drag the button on the progress bar the video doesn't go to the frame and the buffering message start blinking without stopping. I use flvmdi to inject metadata on flv and i am able to read this data so metadata is corect"

What are the right $path?
Please, give me a hint. ;) thx!

rex & demiguru -- the $path variable in your php file needs to be the path to the flv file.

For Linux, if you have access to the command line, navigate to the directory where your flv file is stored and type "pwd" (present working directory).
That comand will show your current path, which is the path to your flv file because you are in the flv folder. Set the $path variable to that output. (should be something similar in form to: /home/users/www/flv/ -- make sure you include the training slash if its not there)

@demiurgu:

I had some problems when I first tried the script with my own .flv file.
The reason why it didn't play the file was because apache/php didn't had the rights to access the file.
( I forgot to chmod the file )

@terry:

Indeed we're on the right page. I didn't had time the last 3 days to work on the code. So I've no progress on new things.
I won't have any time next week to work on it.( wintersports )
So I'll pick it up again after 12 Feb.

I have big files too (around 300 MB) and the solution posted above works ... I really thought about PHP memory file size limitation (often 16 MB) but without finding a solution (i'm idiot) ! Cool ...

But there is one thing : why choose 10000 instead of filesize ? it's in bits, if memory limit is 16MB, why not choose 16000000 (or a bit less) ? ;)

Thank you for the file name stuff...

I am trying to implement the xml loader, the thumbnail previewer and the progressive functionality all in one.
(See the thumbnail preview and xml stuff on this site)

Here's what happens:
All five videos play when selected in the list (simple with the tutorial). I placed the srubit function inside the event listener.

Here is what happens:
1) All videos load and play the first time
2) Can scrub the first video
3) Cannot scrub any other video.
4) Scrubber resides on the same location as the first video WHY???

Do I need to reset some values. Is my code completely ridiculuos.

(I hope to port the xml from Php and be able to have it all dynamic...)

Here is a code snippet.
Sorry about the formatting...

//Tell Function to do stuff when a user selects an item
listListener.change = function( evtobj ){

// close any current stream
ns.close();
video.clear();

//create a new stream
ns = new NetStream(nc);
//"attach" (pipe) stream to this video object       
video.attachVideo(ns);

//Build FLV file name
var flvfile = evtobj.target.selectedItem.data + ".flv";
var _phpURL ="http://www.name.com/Example12/flvprovider.php";
var ending = false;
var amountLoaded:Number;
var duration:Number = 0;
var loaderwidth = loader.loadbar._width;
loader.loadbar._width = 0;
//ATTEMPT TO RESET X VALUE TO RESET SCRUBBER
loader.scrub._x = 0;
   
// play selected flv
ns.play(flvfile);
   
//PULL METADATE FROM INJECTED ARRAY FROM FLVMDI
ns["onMetaData"] = function(obj) {
duration = obj.duration;
// suck out the times and filepositions array, this was added by flvmdi
times = obj.keyframes.times;
positions = obj.keyframes.filepositions;
}
//END OF METADATA FUNCTION
   
//SCRUBBING FEATURE CALLED WHEN USER MOVES SCRUBBER
function videoStatus() {
amountLoaded = ns.bytesLoaded / ns.bytesTotal;
loader.loadbar._width = amountLoaded * loaderwidth;
loader.scrub._x = ns.time / duration * loaderwidth;
}
   
loader.scrub.onPress = function() {
clearInterval (statusID );
ns.pause();
this.startDrag(false,0,this._y,loaderwidth,this._y);
}
   
loader.scrub.onRelease = loader.scrub.onReleaseOutside = function() {   
scrubit();
this.stopDrag();
}
   
function scrubit() {
var tofind = Math.floor((loader.scrub._x/loaderwidth)*duration);
if (tofind <= 0 ) {
restartIt();
return;
}
   
for (var i:Number=0; i < times.length; i++){
var j = i + 1;
if( (times[i] <= tofind) && (times[j] >= tofind ) ){
trace("match at " + times[i] + " and " + positions[i]);
bufferClip._visible = true;
ns.play( _phpURL + "?file=" + flvfile + "&position=" + positions[i]);
trace("play " + _phpURL + "?file=" + flvfile + "&position=" + positions[i]);
break;
}
}
}   
//END OF SCRUBBING FEATURE   

}

Thanks for all your help. I debugged it... I realized I had left a setInterval method out of the scope of the function and it kept calling itself. Bad news for the other videos in the xml list. There are still some more bugs that need to be fine tuned but at least it functions...

The "buffering" thing I talk about above is silly. It wouldn't work. I realized when I tried to code it, that the swf file only sends information to the streamprovider.php once, so it doesn't have that type of feedback to tell the php file its continual current buffering status. The swf would just send the fact that the buffer is empty when it tries to reload each stream.

I would think for it to work, it would have to be implemented by a second call from within the swf file to another php file (the way you might load an xml file, or maby through another hidden NetStream?) that somehow communicates with the streamprovider.php (maybe it sets a flag in a file that the streamprovider.php opens and checks every few seconds? or maybe php files can somehow share variables and the swf just periodically calls another php file that injects the variable into the streamprovider.php? ) -- don't now if that makes sense, but if possible, coding it would be a little beyond me.

Can this be altered to work with subdirectories, or would it just be a simple case of passing in a url var that had the directory name, or a reference, in?

Hi,

it looks like keyframes.times and keyframes.filepositions are a large amount of numbers for each frame in the video. Macromedia's video encoder doesn't put this information in the Video, so your scrubber do only work with flvmdi.

On the Website of flvmdi they say, that they do this with a commercial 'flv-library', and they want to keep it secret.

Do you think there is a possibility to build the php to calculate the byte position from a given time position and do like flvmdi does, without having the metadata injected?

Hi,

Very great stuff, it works on the demo but not in my environment.
When moving to another position, I always got StreamNotFound. I got this message without having done any modification on the source code (except, of course, the URL).


Thanks in advance to provide any advise.
Cheers.
Xris

Hi,

Actually, the problem was coming from the (fread($fh, filesize($file)); line.
Replacing the filesize by a constant fixed the problem.

Now, let's try to have it running with FLVPlayBack.
Did someone already succeed ?

Cheers.
Xris

Hi alexandre,
I think in order to make this work with FLVPlayback we would need to modify a few of its classes. I am sure the metadata can also be added but right now the event may simply dispatch a hardcoded series of properties.

I will look into modifying another, simpler player to provide this functionality. FLVPlayback is good but has some baggage that we don't need for this PHP streaming scenario.

stoem

PHP Streaming with FLVPlayback:
http://philflash.inway.fr/phpstream

This is a beta version.
All sources are available.

Philippe

Hi,
This is a beta.
All is ok with Internet Explorer but with Mozilla Firefox
there are some bugs.
With Firefox, we will get "NetStream.Play.Stop" events
if there is a seek.
I'm working on a solution but the problem is difficult...
Philippe

This web site might be usefull as well if you want to generate FLV online :
www.post-television.com

The generated FLV contains the metadata to use PHP streaming.

Podawan

SWEET!
I thought it would never happen. Great stuff, I'll give it a try as soon as I the chance as most of my apps run on CF too.

PS: my real name is Stefan Richter ;-)

I write a new method to find the right position to stream the video when you call the function scrub_it.

In our project, we work with huge file (2 hours and 1 keyframe by second !) and the actual code seems to be optimized ton find the right position on the positions tab.

Instead of linear search on the tab, I thought to cut the tab in 2 parts while the searched value (tofind) is on one part. So, to be clear, if we have 3000 keyframes, we don't test 3000 times the tab as actual. In this code we have only 11/12 loops (3000/2^12) instead of 3000.

The code :

function scrubit() {
   //Value can be a float ...!
   var tofind = (loader.scrub._x/loaderwidth)*duration;
   if (tofind <= 0 ) {
      restartIt();
      return;
   }

   var moitie = times.length; //get number of keyframes to test
   var tab_test:Array = times; //Copy of the times tab
   var positions_test:Array = positions; //Copy of the positions tab
   var j = null;
   var valeur = 0; //Index of the searched value in the tab

   if (moitie > 0) {
      //Showing buffer clip
      bufferClip._visible = true;
      
      /*************************
      Here, we cut tabs on 2 parts. If value is superior of the value in the middle of the tab,
      we delete (slice) the left part of the tab. If value is inferior, we delete the right of the tab.
      We do many times and when the tab has only 2 values, we verify
      
      *************************/
      while (tab_test.length != 1) {
      
         /************************
         This if can be deleted if you want the inferior value (in the exemple, it will be 11 and not 12)
         of the tab near the value to find.
         Exemple : if tofind = 11.6 and the time tab has two value 11 and 12, it's the value 12 which
         will be selected. We take this position and find the searched positions on the tab positions
         ************************/
         
         if (tab_test.length == 2) {
            var ecart = (tab_test[1] - tab_test[0])/2;
            var verif = tab_test[1] - tofind;
            if (verif < ecart) valeur = 1;
            if (verif >= ecart) valeur = 0;
            break;
         }
         else {
            j = Math.round(moitie/2);
            if (tofind > tab_test[j]) {
               tab_test = tab_test.slice(j, tab_test.length);
               positions_test = positions_test.slice(j, positions_test.length);
            }
            else {
               tab_test = tab_test.slice(0, j);
               positions_test = positions_test.slice(0, j);
            }
            moitie = tab_test.length;
         }
      }
      trace("play " + _phpURL + "?file=" + _vidName + "&position=" + positions_test[valeur]);
      ns.play( _phpURL + "?file=" + _vidName + "&position=" + positions_test[valeur]);
   }
   
}

Perhaps there is error(s) beacause I write it for the function scrub_it() quickly (I tested it correctly with my own tab not times and positions added to a flv).
Here is the original code :

var tab:Array = new Array(3,5,8,10,15,17,19,31,33,34,36,48,52,67,78.1,90,101,111,112,113,114,115,116,120,
121,130,131,132,145,189,190,193,215,234,235,245,253,256,456,478,500,511,512,513);
var positions:Array = new Array(3,5,8,10,15,17,19,31,33,34,36,48,52,67,78.1,90,101,111,112,113,114,115,
116,120,121,130,131,132,145,189,190,193,215,234,235,245,253,256,456,478,500,511,512,513);

var toFind = 234.6;
trace("Taille du tableau

This is a very cool approach! I think we should implement this into the player. And we still need a better player too :-)

Stoem -> Thanks :)

Steve Savage -> Another approach that I thought before. The code works near perfect only if the "video encoding" adds keyframes as much as secondes ! But I doesn't thought about pourcentage ! Very good idea.

For example (a video of 100 secondes, more easy)

loaderwidth = 100;
loader.scrub._x = 10;

var f_percentage = 0.1;
var i_selected = 10;

//There is as much as keyframes than secondes (times.length = 100)
var i_guess = 10;
-->The code make one loop only ! So quick :)

//There is 2 keyframes by secondes (times.length = 200)
var i_guess2 = 20;
-->The code make 10 loops to find the good index.

//There is 1 keyframe by 4 secondes (times.length = 25)
var i_guess3 = 2;
-->The code make only one loop I think ! Cool !

With my code and same video :
1-4 loops
2-5 loops (better)
3-3 loops

Another example with a huge video (4000 secondes)

loaderwidth = 100;
loader.scrub._x = 10;

var f_percentage = 0.1;
var i_selected = 400;

//There is as much as keyframes than secondes (times.length = 4000)
var i_guess = 400;
-->1 loop

//There is 2 keyframes by secondes (times.length = 8000)
var i_guess2 = 800;
-->The code make 400 LOOPS to find the good index (ouch ! but better as actually)

//There is 1 keyframe by 4 secondes (times.length = 1000)
var i_guess3 = 100;
-->1 loop

With my code and same video :
1-12 loops
2-13 loops (better way only here)
3-10 loops

I think I haven't take the best examples here but ... I can say that your code works perfect with small files and/or with keyframes number <= secondes.
If we need precision and a lot of keyframes, my way can be quicker. But finally the two codes are really fast.

A BONUS : with my code, I work with float value (Math.floor not used) and find the nearest keyframe and not the "under keyframe" (ex : times[12] for 11.7 value instead of times[11] as actual).

So, I take note about your "pourcentage method" and I'm interested in Newton's method (but can't find a way to implement it correctly ...)

PS :
with this line : "while (i_guess >= 0 && i_guess < times.length)"
I think it should be no scrub in the last keyframe ... "times[i_guess+1]" is undefined if "i_guess = (times.length - 1)" ... so, "while (i_guess >= 0 && i_guess < (times.length - 1))" is the good way ...

!!! : I notice with this postscriptum that the actual method doesn't scrub correctly if we take a value of timeline > of the last keyframe (ex : last keyframe at 100 secondes and we search 100,34 secondes) because of comparaison "if( (times[i] <= tofind) && (times[j] >= tofind ) )" ...!
It's not a problem with my "slice method".

Alexandre

Hi,

We have extended this player to an advanced level.
Please check below URL.

http://www.dearmyfriends.com/v13/popup.php?idx=390...

Points covered:

i) dvd kind of chapters ( list of intersting poitnsto jump directly to that video part).

ii) can be viewed in different sizes. ie 1x,2x etc

iii) Previous and Next Video buttons( Yes..the two korean buttons provide this)

iv)Exact loadbar showing what bytes loaded to browser.

v) Enhanced php to send bytes to browser


http://www.dearmyfriends.com/v13/popup.php?idx=390...

Thanks
Sudhi

thanks everyone for the work on this.
Sudhi: your page does not contain embed tags for the swf, therefore the page only work in IR and not in Firefox.

Also can you make the source files available?

thanks

Dear stoem ,

It is still under improvement, SO I cant open sources at this stage. If you have any thing to say , you can mail me.

http://fmx.exellen.com/v13/popup.php?idx=398

check above video, which is streaming at 2 MBPS.

I have added Embed tag, so it will work in other browsers too..

--Sudhi

Guys I need some help. I have a 277 meg flv file that I have succesfully got to stream using the lighttd web server but I can't replace my apache2 linux server with that. I am running a linux box with apache2. I have the hacked scrubber.swf file that uses ?file to get the video parameter. I have the phpstream.zip found on this page. I have the video.flv file the flvprovider.php and the scrubber.swf all in a direcory on my webserver. I have a index.html with this object

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="scrubber.swf?file=video.flv" width="420" height="315" wmode="transparent" VIEWASTEXT>
<param name="movie" value="scrubber.swf?file=video.flv" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

Now from what I have gathered I need it to look like this

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="scrubber.swf?file=flvprovider.phpfile=" width="420" height="315" wmode="transparent" VIEWASTEXT>
<param name="movie" value="scrubber.swf?file=flvprovider.php?file=video.flv" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

and I have tried both and neither work? I get buffer that never buffers. Any idea?
Thanks for your help.

Roger