Future of Audio and Video modules in Drupal

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zirafa's picture

..."The future in D7 and beyond is file (field)
along with PHP stream wrappers and other niceties. Media module makes
use of these features already.

We perhaps need a new discussion on groups.drupal.org, to analyze and
figure out what kind of functionality projects like Audio and Video
should provide, if any, starting from D7.

posted by sun on http://drupal.org/node/47998#comment-3139718

We've reached an important milestone with file field improvements in Drupal. Will the Media module be a good replacement for these other modules? Are there any use cases that warrant keeping independent audio/video modules - perhaps providing additional display options, metadata, etc?

Comments

I personally think the Media

travist's picture

I personally think the Media Module is the way forward in terms of multimedia handling and management. I wrote the FlashVideo module about 3 years ago, and although that module does the job it intended to do, there are many things that it does not do or tries to do, but does so poorly. Having a single module that handles this type of functionality not only keeps the confusion down for newcomers, but also allows a consolodated effort for media management in Drupal. Consolodation is what makes modules great! Show me another module that tries to replicate the functionality of Views? There isn't any because all developers have consolodated to make that module great and extrememly rich in features and stability ( not to take anything away from Earl, the Godfather. :)

As for presenting other display options, this is another area where I am focusing and I created a module that focuses on the front end presentation of media called MediaFront. One could argue that something like this module should also be consolodated into the Media module, but I would say that front end presentation needs to be separated from the back end business logic. In other words... in an ideal world there should be many ways to present a SINGLE buisness logic component. This is why Drupal Core can have many different Themes. Most modules are doing this now where the UI component is separated, and they do so for that very reason. So, that someone could easily drop in a new presentation layer to replace the default UI for the business logic it controls. The Media Module is geared to be the single best business logic solution for media handling and management, and I plan on making the MediaFront module work as a new UI presentation layer for that great module.

I hope these ramblings make sense...

Travis.

Second

arthurf's picture

Yep. I think this is exactly the direction that we need to go. Props to Travist!

What about CDN's and FFMPEG?

scarer's picture

I have had to repeatedly opt to use the Flash Video module as it enables the use of a content delivery network, which I think is a vital need for the future of rich media on the web (RTMP, Amazon). As well, Flash Video also supports FFMPEG, which provides the ability to be able to encode media to an appropriate format and size to suit resource requirements, as well as generating thumbnails for teasers.

The media module has great potential but for my use would need to support CDN's and FFMPEG. Are these features going to be supported? Otherwise, will this module work with the media mover module and the FFMPEG wrapper module? If so, how integrated is this solution? I'm happy to change at any time to the media module if these requirements can be satisfied.

At the moment, I'm also looking at how to get audio to be stored in the same way as the flash video module allows the storage of videos (i.e. encoding using ffmpeg and storage using RTMP). It looks like it's going to be another suite of modules or a custom work around (either as a custom module appended to the audio module or a custom module appended to the swf tools, filefield, or FFMPEG wrapper module or maybe incorporating the use of the media mover module). I'm yet to see how I can work these modules together so I am in complete agreement with the need to consolidate media handling in Drupal.

If anyone has any handy tips or suggestions in relation to the above I'd be very grateful.

Cheers

sarah

CDNs etc.

arthurf's picture

There are a few modules that will help you with the Media module already. Wim's CDN Conveyor module can help with CDNs, Media Mover can do both ffmpeg and some cdn duties. Ultimately, D6 is limited its ability to do CDN support because of how it handles files.

From my perspective, while a suite of modules to do your media handling is complicated, for right now I think it's the only viable solution because of the great variety of needs that people have. What I'm hoping for are recipes for standard usages. Using Drush scrips or install profiles could go along way to making media handling easy for admins.

RTMP

scarer's picture

How about RTMP? The flash video module features an scp command that moves the video file to a nominated RTMP server. Yes true this could be performed with Drush, however, would this just be a once off trigger script (maybe using rules?) that's called when a video/audio item is submitted? There is also some benefit in the segregation of directories based on content types on a RTMP server (i.e. audio, video etc.). It could also be beneficial to have directories per user account depending on the type of site. Horses for courses?

What about alternative player

sun's picture

What about alternative player user interfaces for audio and video media? Until HTML5 gets fully adopted and supported, we'll need alternate players.

Or what about recording interfaces, i.e., audio/video comments? Bear in mind that Media module implements a media library only.

Daniel F. Kudwien
netzstrategen

Media Module is a framework not a browsing library

arthurf's picture

The intent of media module is to provide flexible front and backends- in travist's case he's got a player that can do html5 and flash. Likewise, anybody who wants to implement a swf or jquery player can as well. Media module provides a mechanism for those front ends to be implemented.

On the input side, if somebody wants to create a flash or other interface for recording, all that code has to do is implement the media module form and tie it to code that creates an fid.

The point of media module is to offer a framework for an interface to media- either through browsing existing local material, external material, or material that the user creates.

Media module on D6

ClearXS's picture

I have the Media module installed in D6 (download is somewhere on a bit hidden Drupal page):

See picture: http://wi-ca.org/Drupal_modules_Media

As you can read, I just use it to understand what it was meant for and eager not to tick the other conflicting modules on (those ticked on came from other uploaded modules, but are grouped under this one). Instead I have installed an enormous amount of other media modules that sometimes might even overlap. So I have to sort them out.

Media module

drupaljohngo's picture

I'm left in the world of dumbness. I've abandoned the media module for several reasons and now that I'm learning taxonomy and views I'm back to trying to configure it again. I think it is simple to use the new HTML 5 source in a WYSIWYG editor. I attach a media file like an mp3 and it displays a player. It took me forever to do that in the media module and because of issues with jplayer and mediaelement I'm ready for the luny bin.

What I'm trying to do and this will be another post thread is create a taxonomy of audio files. Say mp3 files and other formats like song files for Propellerhead Reason. For every upload of an audio file I'd like it tagged with say mp3 file. Next I'd like to view it as a filtered list by either user or either criteria. I'm left with the full content of the tagged content type and not a list of files. The curse of the noob. Because my media module isn't configured to play nicely with the WYSIWIG editor I can't go that route. I either get some [media: ] type input list of source code or nothing.

Trying to figure it out for a while and It is a mess. Here the site if you want to offer suggestions. www.koluskomtustudios.com .

-johngo

File API

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