Transcoding Audio/Video Files

If you ever decide to run an audio or video streaming server, it might be a good idea to learn about transcode. Essentially, transcode refers to the process of converting one multimedia file format to another. For example, you might convert a .wav audio file to an Mp3 file, or convert an Mpeg2 file to an H.264 file.

On a Linux server, transcode is a specific command that you can use to carry out the conversion process. It is available through most Linux distribution repositories. It is not the easiest software to use for conversion, but there are tutorials that can walk you through the process. For example, the transcode website gives examples for YouTube video encoding.

In addition to transcode, there are many other Linux encoders and converters that offer various features. Some of the most popular are mencoder, ffmpeg, and x264. Depending on your needs, you may get better results with a particular tool. There are also full suites that offer on the fly encoding and automatic conversion. These may be useful if you plan on uploading video files in bulk and need them converted and streamed without hand transcoding each one.

What is FFmpeg hosting?

Question: What is FFmpeg hosting?

Answer: FFmpeg is a suite of tools that provide users with video manipulation, editing, streaming, and recording capabilities on numerous platforms and multiple formats. As the name indicates, it supports a number of mpeg compression formats as well as other open and proprietary video codecs.

In order to have better than average video conversion and streaming on a website, you need a webhost that has FFmpeg installed on your server, accessible from web scripts, and ready to use. Since the advent of YouTube, many hosts have started offering dedicate FFmpeg server packages completely separate from their shared hosting accounts.

This allows the video conversion, streaming, and other tasks to use as much of the CPU and RAM that it needs to complete the tasks quickly and thoroughly. Normally, such servers will also include other related tools and libraries to support as many codecs and options as possible. Those may include but are not limited to Myplayer, xvidcore, Ogg (Theora and Vorbis), and LAME (MP3 Encoder).