#1 Introduction
This document provides information about setting up video uploading and streaming for PHP based websites. This guide has been prepared by studying various resources from Internet hence this is tried and tested and almost de-facto standard in video uploading, processing and streaming.
#2 Video uploading stages
There are 3 stages in video uploading viz. Uploading video, Processing it for streaming and Streaming.
#2.1 Uploading video
Generally video files are large in terms of file size hence separate page/interface is designed to handle long uploading process. By this interface, user can send their video to your server for streaming attached to ad.
#2.2 Processing video
Processing video involves activities such as creating video thumbnails (for promotion, preview etc.), converting video formats suitable for various browsers, extracting meta-data from video for various purposes.
#2.3 Streaming video
In 3rd stage, converted videos are streamed through flash player or by browser's built in media players supporting those video types.
#3 Implementation guidelines
This guidelines mainly emphasizes on set up of web server because it is the most important part and 99% remain same for most of video uploading and streaming purpose; processing and streaming is less critical since it varies from project to project.
#3.1 Uploading video
To upload various types of videos, we first need to set up webserver so that it can accept video files. It is also better to have separate machine for video uploading, processing and streaming so that website which used those videos will not share load given by video related operations as such operations heavily consumes memory and CPU.
In this article I have decided to use Lighttpd 1.5 as video uploading and streaming server mainly for 2 reasons:
#3.1.1 Installing and configuring Lighttpd
For rpm based distributions, use following command to install lighttpd server related packages:
yum install pcre-devel glib2-devel zlib-devel openssl-devel spwan-fcgi php php-cli
Lighttpd 1.5 is not yet available in any yum repository hence we have to compile and configure it manually as shown below:
wget http://download.lighttpd.net/lighttpd/snapshots-1.5/lighttpd-1.5.0-r2698.tar.gz
tar -zxvf lighttpd-1.5.0-r2698.tar.gz
cd lighttpd-1.5.0
make
make install
mkdir /etc/lighttpd/
mkdir -p /www/logs/
mkdir -p /web/pages/
chown lighttpd:lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
cp doc/lighttpd.conf /etc/lighttpd/
"mod_status",
"mod_uploadprogress",
"mod_proxy_core",
"mod_proxy_backend_fastcgi"
"mod_accesslog"
)
server.max-request-size = 150000 // to support approx 120/150 MB of file.
upload-progress.progress-url = "/progress"
upload-progress.remove-timeout = 10
#### mod-proxy-core module
## read mod-proxy-core.txt for more info
## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini
$PHYSICAL["existing-path"] =~ "\.php$" {
proxy-core.balancer = "round-robin"
proxy-core.allow-x-sendfile = "enable"
proxy-core.protocol = "fastcgi"
proxy-core.backends = ( "unix:/tmp/php-fastcgi.sock" )
proxy-core.max-pool-size = 16
}
# setup of host specific to video upload.
$HTTP["host"] =~ "video.myproject.com" {
server.document-root = "/web/video.myproject.com"
server.errorlog = "/web/logs/video.myproject.com_error.log"
#accesslog.filename = "/web/logs/video.myproject.com_access.log"
server.error-handler-404 = "http://www.myproject.com"
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/upload" {
proxy-core.balancer = "round-robin"
proxy-core.protocol = "fastcgi"
proxy-core.allow-x-sendfile = "enable"
proxy-core.backends = (
"unix:/tmp/upload_socket_1.sock",
"unix:/tmp/upload_socket_2.sock",
#"unix:/tmp/upload_socket_N.sock",
)
proxy-core.max-pool-size = 2 # as per backend.
}
}
In above setup, what we are doing is that when video is uploaded to URI upload, we are proxying request to more than 1 socket using fastcgi protocol so that we can handle 2 to N uploads at a time on dedicated unix sockets. We do not need to worry about which socket is to be used and which is not, since webserver handles it on own. You can create more than 2 sockets also to handle more concurrent video uploads.
Here PHP script upload will contain code to move/copy video file at desired location making it available for further processing. This script will be normal PHP CGI script containing valid PHP code. Please note that for copying/renaming etc. you need file name so it is better to pass it from website as hidden variable of the form so that this script can rename video by that name.
Please note that for URI other than upload, dedicated php-fastcgi.sock will be used. Also do not forget to rotate 404 error log :)
#
# lighttpd Startup script for the lighttpd server
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Lightning fast webserver with light system requirements
#
# processname: lighttpd
# config: /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
# config: /etc/sysconfig/lighttpd
# pidfile: /var/run/lighttpd.pid
#
# Note: pidfile is assumed to be created
# by lighttpd (config: server.pid-file).
# Source function library
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/lighttpd ]; then
. /etc/sysconfig/lighttpd
fi
if [ -z "$LIGHTTPD_CONF_PATH" ]; then
LIGHTTPD_CONF_PATH="/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf"
fi
prog="lighttpd"
lighttpd="/usr/sbin/lighttpd"
RETVAL=0
start() {
echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
daemon $lighttpd -f $LIGHTTPD_CONF_PATH
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/upload_socket_1.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/upload_socket_1.pid
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/upload_socket_2.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/upload_socket_2.pid
# /usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/upload_socket_N.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/upload_socket_N.pid
return $RETVAL
}
stop() {
echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
killproc $lighttpd
killproc php-cgi
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock
/var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid /tmp/upload_socket_1.sock /var/run/upload_socket_1.pid
/tmp/upload_socket_2.sock /var/run/upload_socket_2.pid
return $RETVAL
}
reload() {
echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
killproc $lighttpd -HUP
RETVAL=$?
echo
return $RETVAL
}
case "$1" in
start)
start
;;
stop)
stop
;;
restart)
stop
start
;;
condrestart)
if [ -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog ]; then
stop
start
fi
;;
reload)
reload
;;
status)
status $lighttpd
RETVAL=$?
;;
*)
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|condrestart|reload|status}"
RETVAL=1
esac
exit $RETVAL
In above init.d file, I have merged creation of spawn-fcgi process along with lighttpd process because wihout “spawn-fcgi” process your PHP script can not receive data from webserver.
/etc/init.d/lighttpd start
#3.1.2 Creating interface to upload videos
To create interface on your website, follow this best example. It explains how to create HTML form, Jquery based JS code and some basic stylsheets. Please do not forget to validate video file name by extension. If you face cross site domain issue, follow this native example using iframe.
#3.2 Processing video
Once video is copies/moved at desired location, it needs to be processed by a script for various purposes. These operations are like converting video; extract metadata; creating thumbnails; etc. for streaming purpose.
This should be done by separate process script. Let's call it as “process.php” script. But we also need various other software for processing. Install them on video server, using following command:
yum install ffmpeg, flvtool2, compat-readline5, php-gd php-devel libaio-devel
This process.php script will be set into crontab and should run every 1 minute so that newly uploaded videos can be processed as fast as possible.
#3.2.1 Converting video
User might have uploaded videos from any source, so there is no guarantee that it can be played in any browser since all browsers do not support all codecs. Hence we must convert uploaded video into desired format. We decided to use flash format.
Run following command from your php script to convert video into FLV format:
ffmpeg -i INPUT_VIDEO -ar 22050 -ab 32 -ac 1 -f flv -b 700k -r 15 -s ASPECT_RATIO - 2>/dev/null | flvtool2 -U stdin OUTPUT_VIDEO.flv > /dev/null
In above command, we are combining use of flvtool2 to embed keyframe markers for streaming. In your script, you will require to adjust ASPECT_RATIO.
#3.2.2 Creating thumbnails
To extract thumbnail from video file, following command can be used:
ffmpeg -itsoffset -4 -i VIDEO_FILE -vcodec CODEC -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 OUTPUT.jpg
This command generates a 320×240 sized JPG thumbnail at the 4th second in the video. You can use this example to randomly create thumbnails according to length of the video.
#3.2.3 Extract metadata
To extract metadata, following command can be used:
ffmpeg -i INPUT_VIDEO
It will print lot of metadata about video in text format which can be stored in database or used while streaming video.
#3.3 Streaming video
Streaming video requires support from webserver, JS, Flash player and some HTML work.
#3.3.1 Preparing server
Lighttpd server has built in streaming support to stream video files. To support streaming using keyframes, enable required module in server “/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf” configuration file:
server.modules += ( "mod_flv_streaming" )
flv-streaming.extensions = ( ".flv" )
Restart web service to reflect above changes. Now server is ready to stream video files in flv format with support of keyframes.
#3.3.2 Streaming through HTML5
There are 2 ways to stream video. They are either using HTML5's native “video” tag or using Flash player as container.
Streaming video through HTML5 is as easy as showing image in browser, but unfortunately not all browsers support HTML5 because their support started to arrive in latest browser only in beginning of year 2011. Moreover even if browser supports HTML5, not all browsers supports all codec (another round of browser war) hence if user uploads video with H.264 codec, it will not be played in firefox and chrome browsers. Similarly if video is encoded using Theora codec then it will not be played in IE. More information about this situation can be found from here.
However if still it is decided to use HTML5 then following HTML tag can be used:
<video src="movie.mpeg" controls="controls">
Fallback flash player based video streaming code.
</video>
That's it, by this way any video file can be played without any JS/HTML code if browser supports video file's codec natively.
#3.3.3 Streaming through Flash player
Unfortunately standard solution is to use Flash player based video streaming method which streams video inside flash container. That is why earlier we had to convert video into “flv” format :). Because flash player natively supports almost all codec.
To stream video using flash container, follow this excellent tutorial.
#4 Improvements
http://flowplayer.org/plugins/streaming/pseudostreaming.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video#Format_details
http://praegnanz.de/html5video/
http://uakino.net/media/document/1009.pdf
http://diveintohtml5.info/video.html
This document provides information about setting up video uploading and streaming for PHP based websites. This guide has been prepared by studying various resources from Internet hence this is tried and tested and almost de-facto standard in video uploading, processing and streaming.
#2 Video uploading stages
There are 3 stages in video uploading viz. Uploading video, Processing it for streaming and Streaming.
#2.1 Uploading video
Generally video files are large in terms of file size hence separate page/interface is designed to handle long uploading process. By this interface, user can send their video to your server for streaming attached to ad.
#2.2 Processing video
Processing video involves activities such as creating video thumbnails (for promotion, preview etc.), converting video formats suitable for various browsers, extracting meta-data from video for various purposes.
#2.3 Streaming video
In 3rd stage, converted videos are streamed through flash player or by browser's built in media players supporting those video types.
#3 Implementation guidelines
This guidelines mainly emphasizes on set up of web server because it is the most important part and 99% remain same for most of video uploading and streaming purpose; processing and streaming is less critical since it varies from project to project.
#3.1 Uploading video
To upload various types of videos, we first need to set up webserver so that it can accept video files. It is also better to have separate machine for video uploading, processing and streaming so that website which used those videos will not share load given by video related operations as such operations heavily consumes memory and CPU.
In this article I have decided to use Lighttpd 1.5 as video uploading and streaming server mainly for 2 reasons:
- it is specially designed to serve static contents,
- it has such modules/plugins which provides information about uploading progress directly to caller script which is very convenient to developers to design interface with minium coding.
#3.1.1 Installing and configuring Lighttpd
For rpm based distributions, use following command to install lighttpd server related packages:
yum install pcre-devel glib2-devel zlib-devel openssl-devel spwan-fcgi php php-cli
Lighttpd 1.5 is not yet available in any yum repository hence we have to compile and configure it manually as shown below:
- Download lighttpd.
wget http://download.lighttpd.net/lighttpd/snapshots-1.5/lighttpd-1.5.0-r2698.tar.gz
tar -zxvf lighttpd-1.5.0-r2698.tar.gz
cd lighttpd-1.5.0
- Configure and install
make
make install
- Add necessary user/group, directories and files
mkdir /etc/lighttpd/
mkdir -p /www/logs/
mkdir -p /web/pages/
chown lighttpd:lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
cp doc/lighttpd.conf /etc/lighttpd/
- Make changes as per your setup by editing “/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf” file
"mod_status",
"mod_uploadprogress",
"mod_proxy_core",
"mod_proxy_backend_fastcgi"
"mod_accesslog"
)
server.max-request-size = 150000 // to support approx 120/150 MB of file.
upload-progress.progress-url = "/progress"
upload-progress.remove-timeout = 10
#### mod-proxy-core module
## read mod-proxy-core.txt for more info
## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini
$PHYSICAL["existing-path"] =~ "\.php$" {
proxy-core.balancer = "round-robin"
proxy-core.allow-x-sendfile = "enable"
proxy-core.protocol = "fastcgi"
proxy-core.backends = ( "unix:/tmp/php-fastcgi.sock" )
proxy-core.max-pool-size = 16
}
# setup of host specific to video upload.
$HTTP["host"] =~ "video.myproject.com" {
server.document-root = "/web/video.myproject.com"
server.errorlog = "/web/logs/video.myproject.com_error.log"
#accesslog.filename = "/web/logs/video.myproject.com_access.log"
server.error-handler-404 = "http://www.myproject.com"
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/upload" {
proxy-core.balancer = "round-robin"
proxy-core.protocol = "fastcgi"
proxy-core.allow-x-sendfile = "enable"
proxy-core.backends = (
"unix:/tmp/upload_socket_1.sock",
"unix:/tmp/upload_socket_2.sock",
#"unix:/tmp/upload_socket_N.sock",
)
proxy-core.max-pool-size = 2 # as per backend.
}
}
In above setup, what we are doing is that when video is uploaded to URI upload, we are proxying request to more than 1 socket using fastcgi protocol so that we can handle 2 to N uploads at a time on dedicated unix sockets. We do not need to worry about which socket is to be used and which is not, since webserver handles it on own. You can create more than 2 sockets also to handle more concurrent video uploads.
Here PHP script upload will contain code to move/copy video file at desired location making it available for further processing. This script will be normal PHP CGI script containing valid PHP code. Please note that for copying/renaming etc. you need file name so it is better to pass it from website as hidden variable of the form so that this script can rename video by that name.
Please note that for URI other than upload, dedicated php-fastcgi.sock will be used. Also do not forget to rotate 404 error log :)
- Verify installation by running following command
- Create init.d file “/etc/init.d/lighttpd” as shown below
#
# lighttpd Startup script for the lighttpd server
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Lightning fast webserver with light system requirements
#
# processname: lighttpd
# config: /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
# config: /etc/sysconfig/lighttpd
# pidfile: /var/run/lighttpd.pid
#
# Note: pidfile is assumed to be created
# by lighttpd (config: server.pid-file).
# Source function library
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/lighttpd ]; then
. /etc/sysconfig/lighttpd
fi
if [ -z "$LIGHTTPD_CONF_PATH" ]; then
LIGHTTPD_CONF_PATH="/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf"
fi
prog="lighttpd"
lighttpd="/usr/sbin/lighttpd"
RETVAL=0
start() {
echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
daemon $lighttpd -f $LIGHTTPD_CONF_PATH
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/upload_socket_1.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/upload_socket_1.pid
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/upload_socket_2.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/upload_socket_2.pid
# /usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/upload_socket_N.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u lighttpd -g lighttpd -P /var/run/upload_socket_N.pid
return $RETVAL
}
stop() {
echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
killproc $lighttpd
killproc php-cgi
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock
/var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid /tmp/upload_socket_1.sock /var/run/upload_socket_1.pid
/tmp/upload_socket_2.sock /var/run/upload_socket_2.pid
return $RETVAL
}
reload() {
echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
killproc $lighttpd -HUP
RETVAL=$?
echo
return $RETVAL
}
case "$1" in
start)
start
;;
stop)
stop
;;
restart)
stop
start
;;
condrestart)
if [ -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog ]; then
stop
start
fi
;;
reload)
reload
;;
status)
status $lighttpd
RETVAL=$?
;;
*)
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|condrestart|reload|status}"
RETVAL=1
esac
exit $RETVAL
In above init.d file, I have merged creation of spawn-fcgi process along with lighttpd process because wihout “spawn-fcgi” process your PHP script can not receive data from webserver.
- Start lighttpd service
/etc/init.d/lighttpd start
#3.1.2 Creating interface to upload videos
To create interface on your website, follow this best example. It explains how to create HTML form, Jquery based JS code and some basic stylsheets. Please do not forget to validate video file name by extension. If you face cross site domain issue, follow this native example using iframe.
#3.2 Processing video
Once video is copies/moved at desired location, it needs to be processed by a script for various purposes. These operations are like converting video; extract metadata; creating thumbnails; etc. for streaming purpose.
This should be done by separate process script. Let's call it as “process.php” script. But we also need various other software for processing. Install them on video server, using following command:
yum install ffmpeg, flvtool2, compat-readline5, php-gd php-devel libaio-devel
This process.php script will be set into crontab and should run every 1 minute so that newly uploaded videos can be processed as fast as possible.
#3.2.1 Converting video
User might have uploaded videos from any source, so there is no guarantee that it can be played in any browser since all browsers do not support all codecs. Hence we must convert uploaded video into desired format. We decided to use flash format.
Run following command from your php script to convert video into FLV format:
ffmpeg -i INPUT_VIDEO -ar 22050 -ab 32 -ac 1 -f flv -b 700k -r 15 -s ASPECT_RATIO - 2>/dev/null | flvtool2 -U stdin OUTPUT_VIDEO.flv > /dev/null
In above command, we are combining use of flvtool2 to embed keyframe markers for streaming. In your script, you will require to adjust ASPECT_RATIO.
#3.2.2 Creating thumbnails
To extract thumbnail from video file, following command can be used:
ffmpeg -itsoffset -4 -i VIDEO_FILE -vcodec CODEC -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 OUTPUT.jpg
This command generates a 320×240 sized JPG thumbnail at the 4th second in the video. You can use this example to randomly create thumbnails according to length of the video.
#3.2.3 Extract metadata
To extract metadata, following command can be used:
ffmpeg -i INPUT_VIDEO
It will print lot of metadata about video in text format which can be stored in database or used while streaming video.
#3.3 Streaming video
Streaming video requires support from webserver, JS, Flash player and some HTML work.
#3.3.1 Preparing server
Lighttpd server has built in streaming support to stream video files. To support streaming using keyframes, enable required module in server “/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf” configuration file:
server.modules += ( "mod_flv_streaming" )
flv-streaming.extensions = ( ".flv" )
Restart web service to reflect above changes. Now server is ready to stream video files in flv format with support of keyframes.
#3.3.2 Streaming through HTML5
There are 2 ways to stream video. They are either using HTML5's native “video” tag or using Flash player as container.
Streaming video through HTML5 is as easy as showing image in browser, but unfortunately not all browsers support HTML5 because their support started to arrive in latest browser only in beginning of year 2011. Moreover even if browser supports HTML5, not all browsers supports all codec (another round of browser war) hence if user uploads video with H.264 codec, it will not be played in firefox and chrome browsers. Similarly if video is encoded using Theora codec then it will not be played in IE. More information about this situation can be found from here.
However if still it is decided to use HTML5 then following HTML tag can be used:
<video src="movie.mpeg" controls="controls">
Fallback flash player based video streaming code.
</video>
That's it, by this way any video file can be played without any JS/HTML code if browser supports video file's codec natively.
#3.3.3 Streaming through Flash player
Unfortunately standard solution is to use Flash player based video streaming method which streams video inside flash container. That is why earlier we had to convert video into “flv” format :). Because flash player natively supports almost all codec.
To stream video using flash container, follow this excellent tutorial.
#4 Improvements
- In this article, I have not discussed about realtime video format validation to prevent users from uploading junks.
- Since video server mostly serves video files and occasionally JS and HTML, you should deny access for other files than these.
- When you will require more features for video processing, streaming you will need to use wrapper classes like phpvideotoolkit and native ffmpeg-php extension.
http://flowplayer.org/plugins/streaming/pseudostreaming.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video#Format_details
http://praegnanz.de/html5video/
http://uakino.net/media/document/1009.pdf
http://diveintohtml5.info/video.html
