Hosting video files (flv)

[subwiz]

We are planning to host series of video files (flv) for streaming to end users. The visitors will be viewing the video from Liferay portal. The video files are of the sizes ranging between 50mb to 300mb. Immediately on publishing videos on the portal, it will have around 200 visitors viewing it (say within couple of minutes). Now the question:

* Do we host the video files as WCM contents, that gets published in a WebServer path using FSR. The WebServer will be configured for optimum delivery of these files.
* Or, can we directly use the DM (Document Management) part of Alfresco to host these videos? And link the Portal to stream the video directly from the Alfresco DM URL?

[mrogers]

You can experiment with either approach, both will work.

If you have several linked assets for each file (say a video file and a few HTML assets) then WCM may be the better solution.    If its just a set on unrelated video files then DM may be what is required.

[joelhulen]

Hello, I just ran across this posting about storing FLV video files in Alfresco and accessing via Liferay. We are wanting to do the exact same thing, and I was wondering if you could please tell me which streaming server you're using and if you've found a portlet for a video player or are using a 3rd party player like flowPlayer.

Sorry for bothering you, but I've been dealing with this issue for a while.

Thanks in advance,
Joel Hulen

[stevereiner]

FlexSpaces has a component/view that can play videos stored in Alfresco. Its available from its "Play Video" context menu. It uses the Flex mx:VideoDisplay which supports progressive download over HTTP. This control also supports streaming from the Flash Media Server.

FlexSpaces (or components from it) can run in Liferay portlets
http://integratedsemantics.org/2008/11/30/liferay-flexspaces-alfresco/

http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/flexspaces/

[subwiz]

Hello, I just ran across this posting about storing FLV video files in Alfresco and accessing via Liferay. We are wanting to do the exact same thing, and I was wondering if you could please tell me which streaming server you're using and if you've found a portlet for a video player or are using a 3rd party player like flowPlayer.

We are not using any streaming server. For displaying the video in Liferay, we have developed a custom portlet using Flow Player.

[joelhulen]

We decided to use flowPlayer in a custom portlet as well. How did you manage to handle encoding the video uri's and including the metadata if you don't mind me asking? Also, are you using pseudostreaming? If so, on which web server are you running?

[subwiz]

We decided to use flowPlayer in a custom portlet as well. How did you manage to handle encoding the video uri's and including the metadata if you don't mind me asking?

My portlet (JSR-286 compatible, with Liferay specific configuration for making it Instanciable) is available here:

http://code.google.com/p/java-portlets/

Click on the preferences to configure the portlet.

…are you using pseudostreaming? If so, on which web server are you running?

We are not using pseudostreaming. We are using standard Apache 2 webserver.