Spam: The other white meat

Since my last screencast looking at the functionality of FFmpeg Wrapper, I've done quite a bit to improve the interface for transcoding. I've added an AHAH layer for file information which I think is really helpful for inspecting files. If you want a fast introduction to how to transcode files in Drupal, give it a peek.

The 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights has brought to the fore the work of many organizations who are utilizing the web (and Drupal) to fight for human rights across the word.

Witness has been featured several times in the last few days on BoingBoing highlighting content Witness has helped produce and is kept on The Hub. Witness' hub is a unique form of advocacy- part organizing tool, part citizen journalism- The Hub provides a large collection of human rights video which is not subject to the whims of corporations making it quite unique in the commercial world of web media.

While the work that organizations like Witness are doing is vastly more important than the software that they use, it is worth noting that Amnesty International, Witness and Human Rights Watch are all using Drupal in their work. I'd like to think that part of this is because of the commitments of users, developers, and Drupal shops is not just to better software, but to a better world- but it would not be the first time I was accused of being an idealist.

The Hub on Boing Boing:

• [BBtv WORLD + WITNESS.org: 60 Years of Declaration of Human Rights, and Rights of The Mentally Disabled
• Xeni interviews WITNESS.org digital archivist Grace Lile on video and human rights
• BBtv + Witness A Massacre Remembered in Guatemala

Anantagati just announced the new Custom Command module for Media Mover. Essentially it provides a mechanism to run command line utilities to do file processing inside a Media Mover process.

By integrating Token module with the Custom Command module a powerful tool for setting up batch processing with whatever command line tools you need- whether a custom script, application, or firing up a server cloud to process thousands of video files- you've got easy integration right from Drupal.

This is perhaps what is most exciting for me about Media Mover- as it matures, it provides the opportunity for people to easily write powerful modules without having to rebuild the wheel every time- the more stable media mover gets, the easier it will be. The Drupal 5 version already has a RC1 candidate in CVS and the Drupal 6 version will hit Alpha2 shortly.

I just committed a rather nice piece of functionality to the FFmpeg Wrapper module. Files that are attached to Drupal nodes can be transcoded multiple times by a simple interface. Once you find settings that you like, you can attach your transcoded file back to the original node.

Whether you need to create a file for download, create a web-friendly format from a file, or just want to offer a high or low bandwidth versions, any file that is attached to a Drupal node via the upload form and can be transcoded with this tool.

FFmpeg Wrapper puts a link on the file attachments list to the FFmpeg Wrapper testing tool on files that FFmpeg can transcode- which helps identify bad file types quickly.

Long over due, the first release of the Drupal 6 version of Media Mover is finally out. While there are several modules in the suite that are not finished in porting or fully tested, the core modules are ready for daring people to try out at this point. Please read the release notes which have some information about which modules are functional.

FFmpeg wrapper just got a nice little utility for testing FFmpeg conversion settings. For most people the knowledge of video and audio codecs is a bit of an arcane science- what settings go with what codec, much less the rules about audio formats... it is all a bit messy.

So I've put together the beginnings of an interface that lets an admin select a file uploaded to the server and run tests to their hearts content on it. Bitrates, codecs, and all the other options that FFmpeg Wrapper provides are available for use.

You can check out the latest progress on the Media Mover port to Drupal 6 here. I've made quite a bit of headway on things- there are a few helper modules left to go and doubtless, lots of testing. However, I did an end to end test today of harvesting from a FTP server and pushed the files to Amazon's S3 with a FFmpeg conversion in between. The future is bright.

The Hub is a Drupal driven portal for human rights content. There are a variety of really interesting implementations of various aspects that it does, but the one I want to focus on is functionality that was just released that connects user uploaded content back to to the player.

Media Mover can be pretty CPU intensive- transcoding with FFmpeg can be a substantial hit on your server resources. If you couple this with a large amount of batch processing, you are looking at high loads over a long period of time.

Asset is the obvious choice if you need your users to be able to easily upload content and place it within WYWISYG editor. Media Mover is probably on the other side of the spectrum- tones of options, lots of arcane settings that will not make sense if you are not familiar with the ins and outs of rich media- further if you just want to get your transcoded media on the page.

The problem is that Media Mover is more of an API than it is an interface. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to really call it an interface if you’re an end user. A while back, I released the Auto Run module for Media Mover which runs Media Mover configurations when a node is created or updated. This really set the groundwork for starting to move toward running Media Mover configurations on specific user interactions- the ones that I think a majority of people are looking for. This approach- the transcode on create/update content- while workable, still does not give the end user control of how page layout works. For some, this is a fine middle ground approach, for others, unworkable. From my perspective, Asset provides a solid way for users to add content to their nodes. Of course WYSISYG editors are problematic, but they are not going anywhere, and hopefully, their HTML will just get better. Asset goes along way toward improving the integration between WYSIWYG editors and Drupal. Media Mover can remain a work horse for rich media, but it can also play nice when it comes to offering up its services.