January :: 2009 :: Page 3

Archive for January 2009 – Page 3

Auttomatic Releases WordPress Video Solution Framework Code

by Chris Jean

January 14th, 2009

I didn’t see a lot of fanfare, but the release of the WordPress Video Solution Framework plugin, also called the WordPress.com Video Server, has the potential to be huge.

Some of you may wonder why I was interested in getting FFmpeg installed again. This is the reason why: Auttomatic has released code that makes it possible (with some work and knowhow) to turn a WordPress Mu platform into a video solution.

Features

Video-Uploader: A program that will load raw video files into the transcoder without making the user wait
Video-Transcoder
- Takes in raw video from the Uploader
- Transcodes the video into h.264
- Stores the video into an mp4 container
- Creates thumbnails
- Sends the files and meta data to the file server
Video-FinalTouch
- Receives files and data from the Transcoder
- Copies the files into the source video’s folder
- Updates the database tables with new video information
- Can be customized to replicate or load files into a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Video-XML
- Reads in information from the video such as: caption, duration, and format
- Returns this information in XML format
- Caches information to ensure quick performance
Video-AJAX: Displays the video when the transcoder has not completed processing the raw video data
Includes a player written in ActionScript 3 that will handle proper display of the video based upon your configuration

Final Thoughts

The notes indicate that at least some work must be done in order to make everything function. Since I have yet to try everything out yet, I don’t know exactly how much work that would be. I’ll be sure to post about my experiences and hopefully have some examples soon.

The notes also indicate that you’ll need to have a working install of FFmpeg and qt-faststart (the readme.txt file says qu-faststart, but it’s actually qt-faststart). To install FFmpeg, see Install FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php on CentOS Easily.

Categories Development, WordPress
Comments (6)

Install FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php on CentOS Easily

by Chris Jean

January 13th, 2009

FFmpeg is an amazing collection of open-source tools that can record and stream video and audio. However, it can also transcode video and audio (convert the files to different formats), and that is what has me so excited. There’s also a great PHP package called ffmpeg-php that allows for easy use of FFmpeg from inside PHP scripts. Today, I’m going to see if I can’t help you get both of these set up on your system.

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve tried to install FFmpeg, about two years. I recently thought up some ideas on how I’d like to use FFmpeg, so I thought it was time to give it a try yet again. Today, I’m proud to say that installing FFmpeg is so much easier to install compared to the past, that I dare say it’s simple.

Here is my experience with installing FFmpeg on my server and how to fix the pitfalls that I encountered.

Categories Development, Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (32)

Convert XML to Associative Array in PHP

by Chris Jean

January 12th, 2009

I’m working on a project where I needed to convert an XML doc into an associative array in PHP easily. I hadn’t done any work with XML in PHP yet, so I started digging around the usual places.

Soon, it looked like my best option would be to create a completely-custom XML parsing engine out of PHP’s built-in XML Parser. I started working on a set of code based off of the External Entity Example since that is the only example that actually incorporates the ability to retrieve data and not just attributes. My results were slow and very error prone. Why is this so tough? XML isn’t exactly new, and it is very widespread. Similarly, PHP is an extremely popular language. So, why is it so hard to combine the two and work with them easily? I shouldn’t have to create a custom syntax parser just to be able to read a standard format document into a PHP data structure.

Categories Development
Comments (23)

Eversion is a Great Platformer

by Chris Jean

January 11th, 2009

I stumbled on a great game the other day called Eversion. At first this game seems to be a simple, cutesy platformer, but it holds a great twist that starts simple and gets weirder and weirder.

I really don’t want to give anything away, so I just recommend that you give it a try. A bit of advice should be helpful though, the spacebar does something, but only in certain locations.

I wish you the best of luck as Eversion is not an easy platformer.

Categories Random Ramblings
Comments (0)

Cleaning a Computer: A Story of Smoke, Viruses, and Love

by Chris Jean

January 9th, 2009

image from New Life Service Co.

I got an emergency call from a friend yesterday. His computer was totally eaten up by viruses and couldn’t function anymore. He’s a writer and doesn’t do backups, so he was naturally very afraid that he would lose the book drafts that he’s been working on.

I brought him and his ailing computer over to my place to give it some TLC and get it back in fighting condition. This system, Raine, is special to me as it was the second computer I built. That was way back in 2002, and when I cracked the case, horror itself greeted me. I could see that I had a long night ahead of me.

Categories Random Ramblings, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (9)

Dual Boot Ubuntu and Linux Mint with Shared /home

by Chris Jean

January 7th, 2009

Lumière is a system I built a couple of months ago to be a pure Linux-only machine. I haven’t done much with her, but it’s time to change that. As I’ve posted before, I really wanted to run different distros through their paces in order to weigh their pros and cons. However, I also wanted to have a system that I could actually use, so I decided to do a multiboot system with shared /home partitions.

Last night, I decided to start off easy and add Linux Mint (Felicia) on top of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex). Now I say that this is easy since Linux Mint is actually a modified version of Ubuntu (which also happens to be a modified version of Debian). Since Linux Mint and Ubuntu share a similar structure, all the user and group IDs would be the same. This means that setting up a shared /home partition would be much simpler.

I also wanted to use Linux Mint since it has been highly recommended to me many times.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (2)

smrsh: “php” not available for sendmail programs (stat failed)

by Chris Jean

January 7th, 2009

I had to configure Sendmail in order for Ubersmith to be able to receive support requests via email. Basically, you configure an alias (/etc/aliases) like so:

support: "|php -q -f /home/html/cron/gateway.php domain.com 1"

This all seemed to be very straightforward. I didn’t even think to test it until hours later. When I finally did test out the support request by email function, I received this very abrupt rebuke from Sendmail in the form of a bounceback:

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (2)

Configuring Sendmail to Receive External Mail

by Chris Jean

January 7th, 2009

I’m having all sorts of fun playing around with Linux these days, both on my personal systems and on servers. Earlier, I had to configure Sendmail to receive outside mail. I’ve used larger mail solutions on Linux before, such as Qmail, but I didn’t need anything near that complex since I just needed to make sure that this server could receive specifically routed messages.

When I first started digging around, I couldn’t even find out how to change any of the settings, but it was clear that the server was only listening on the localhost loopback address. Even my usual solution of googling for answers wasn’t turning up much. Finally, after searching for about half an hour, I found this extremely helpful guide, which I will simply direct you to if you wish to get Sendmail configured on your box.

Good luck.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (3)

Trouble with Ubersmith, Ioncube, and mb_internal_encoding

by Chris Jean

January 6th, 2009

Today I’m installing Ubersmith, a billing system solution, on a server to test it out. I have to say that Ubersmith has a more complex installation process than I’m used to these days. I guess that I’ve been spoiled.

Here’s a quick word about what I’m running. My test server is a dedicated system running CentOS 5.2 64-bit. The software setup is nothing special as most of the packages are straight from the repository.

I loaded the release files on the server, untarred them, and proceeded to read the instructions. Everything looked to be straight-forward. I quickly got down to the part about installing Ioncube. That’s when the trouble started.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (0)

Hide Desktop Icons in Ubuntu

by Chris Jean

January 6th, 2009

My quest for the perfect Ubuntu desktop continues.

Today, I really wanted to remove all of my desktop icons since I like using that area for storage, but I don’t like having all that stuff strewn across each of my workspaces since I never actually use the desktop itself. I searched around and found some helpful information, but it really didn’t do what I wanted. I’ll provide that information in case it does what you want.

The Configuration Editor is Ubuntu’s (more acurately, Gnome’s) application that lets you control a massive number of options that all work together to present your desktop, file browser, windowing system, etc. You can add and remove system generated icons from the desktop by using the Configuration Editor (from now on referred to as Gconf. To load Gconf press “Alt+F2″ to bring up the Run Application dialog, type in gconf-editor, and click Run.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (10)

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