galahad

A client is thinking of starting up a YouTube type of site (albeit on a smaller scale!) where registered users can upload videos in various formats- these will then be converted to FLV behind the scenes and become viewable on the site.

How easy is it to set up this kind of functionality- particularly with regards getting a process on the site to convert the videos, and also limit uploaded file size?

Is it also possible for some sort of process to monitor content and alert if it fails certain criteria, or would this need to be done by a human?

As we're a small firm I really wanted to get some idea of the feasibility of doing this within a small team framework.

I imagine the bandwidth required is also going to be prohibitive, so I'm thinking maybe a dedicated server is a good idea- I'm not aware of any reseller packages that can handle hundreds of users playing / streaming hundreds of high-quality video files each day or week...

MrBen

I'd look at using Amazon S3 for storage/streaming and possibly Amazon EC2 for the conversion.

It's very scalable and resilient you're only charged for what you use so could be very economical to run (perhaps not so much to develop the site that sits on top).

More info at Amazon.com: Homepage: Amazon Web Services I'd check out their developer forums.

Ben

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galahad

Thanks, I'll take a look. Hadn't thought of Amazon... mainly because I didn't realise they had a stake in this sort of business as well (though it doesn't surprise me thinking about it)

iraklis

I`ve done something similar using blip.tv. I`ve set up an upload script on my site , he file is moved to blip.tv where it`s converted to flv and using their api i display the videos. This way i don`t need huge space for storage and many gbs bandwith.

galahad

Presumably just a standard file upload script (I have a PHP one) will work, or is some proprietary code required for blip.tv?

What sort of cost is involved (ball park)?

iraklis

If remember correctly you don`t need something special for the upload script but check http://wiki.blip.tv (username blip pass teevee) for a description of their api. I`m no guru and found my way with the script so i guess you won`t have a problem

Since you`ll use php the videos will be pretty small (UH limits php uploads to 10mbs i think) the cost will be 0. They only limit your conversion time so if the video is big (+100mb) there is a chance that it won`t be converted to flv but the original file will still be visible.