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).

Continue reading: What is FFmpeg hosting?

When people think of data centers, they often envision large rooms full of loud servers. This YouTube video shows the data center in a much more innovative way– its construction from start to finish, all with Lego bricks.

With high-speed connections and millions of pages to visit, I think too many people take the Internet for granted. We can see as much of the web as we care to from our chairs, but rarely do we see the systems that power it all. The engineers who design these server facilities and the people who work tirelessly to run them deserve more credit.

Continue reading: Data center construction- Lego style

In what has become a highly controversial domain dispute, ICANN has uncharacteristically released a statement about it explaining their non-participant role in domain name disputes. According to reports, the respondents registered the domain youtubeislam.com and created a website that allowed people to post videos about Islam and Muslims.

The site mimicked not only the YouTube name, but also the format and style of the site. Google, the legal owner of the YouTube trademark, filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum. The youtubeislam.com site owners did not respond to the complaint, and the arbitrator ruled in favor of Google, following the same UDRP criteria that is normally used.

Many people complained that Google had unfairly targeted the site and that the dispute was somehow politically motivated. They took their complaint to ICANN, which responded on their blog, explaining that they do not have authority over domain disputes. While ICANN does have limited oversight over domain registrars, domain disputes are handled by third party organizations, the blog post reiterated.

Source: ICANN
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: ICANN Issues Statement Regarding YouTubeIslam.com

Not to be deterred by a little litigation and jail time, the founders of The Pirate Bay plan to launch a new video sharing site. The new potential YouTube competitor will feature videos without copyright restrictions, the company claims. YouTube has long been the subject of copyright disputes with numerous companies requesting videos to be taken down for copyright violation. It is Google’s policy to comply.

The new video site, aptly called The Video Bay, will rely on HTML 5 video technology. It is currently in “beta extreme” and only hosts a handful of videos. Users wishing to view the videos will need versions of the latest web browsers, such as Firefox 3.5, that support the new video embedding. Once installed, a user can view the videos without the need for third-party plugins, such as Adobe Flash Player.

A Swedish court ruled that the Founders of The Pirate Bay were guilty of copyright violation, fined them $3.6 million dollars and sentenced them to a year in prison. The case is currently under appeal. In response to this, The Pirate Bay, which is still up and running, created a privacy service that allows subscribers to share files anonymously through security encryption.

Source: Information Week
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: The Pirate Bay introduces video sharing site

TOSBack is a new site created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that tracks terms of service (TOS) agreements on major websites such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, eBay, Apple, and Wordpress. In the past, some major social media sites have instituted TOS agreements that alarmed users and raised questions about their right to privacy. All of the sites in question frequently collect sensitive user data that most users expect to be protected from advertising, unwanted disclosure and fraud.

With this new website, the EFF gives users the ability to see changes in policies via a real-time feed, including side-by-side comparisons of the agreements with the changes highlighted.

‘Terms of Service’ policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information,” the EFF said in a statement. “But most web users don’t read these policies–or understand that the terms are constantly changing.”

Usually, a website will send mass emails to their users whenever a policy change takes effect, but most users do not bother to read the often complicated and lengthy documents. Earlier this year, Facebook made a change to its policy that allowed it to use deleted user content whenever and for as long as it wanted. When users protested, the company backed down from the change. The EFF hopes to put other major Internet services under the same scrutiny to ensure user rights are protected.

Source: CNET
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: EFF tracks policy changes on Facebook, YouTube and others

A survey recently conducted by market research company comScore sheds new light on online video viewing habits in the States.

The study found that Americans viewed 16.8 billion hours of online video in April. That is 1,916 years, or two millenniums, worth. This marked a 16% increase from the previous month.

YouTube had the largest market share out of any video site. It accounted for nearly 40% of total viewership. Trailing far behind was FOX with 3%, Hulu with 2.4%, and Yahoo with 2.1%.

The 152 million web users tracked viewed an average of 111 videos per person. The average duration of each video was 3.5 minutes. Nearly 80% of American Internet users watch video online.

The study makes no mention of how many of these users were Rick-rolled, however.

Continue reading: Americans View 6.4 Hours of Online Video per Month, Study Says