As you can see, Google doesn’t use normal servers. All of its systems are custom-built to meet its needs. It also keeps much of its technology secret, so seeing this server in-person is a big deal. The power supply has a built-in battery that acts like a UPS, for instance.

The most obvious feature is the large amount of RAM. The Mountain View company supposedly stores all server data on memory for fast retrieval.

Microsoft describes Silverlight as:

“…a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to Web browsers running on Mac OS X and Windows.”

To put it in layman’s terms, Silverlight is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash. As a direct competitor to Flash, Microsoft had big plans for Silverlight from the beginning. It can play animations, multimedia, videos, and be used for application development.

As a website owner or system administrator, you should be aware of Silverlight, but you may not have a good reason to use it at this time. First of all, while Microsoft says it is cross-platform, it is not available for Linux, BSD, and some mobile operating systems. There is a free version of it, called Moonlight, created by Novell, but it has always been a full version behind Microsoft’s and does not support the DRM video components that allow for features like Netflix “Watch Now” playback.

The second problem with Silverlight is that it simply does not have very widespread adoption. If you put Silverlight elements on your website, visitors will need to download the plugin (if it is even available on their operating system). This is bad enough with Adobe Flash, which some users block, but they may choose to not even bother to view your site if they have to download another plugin. While Silverlight may have some features that Flash does not, it is essentially just trading one closed format for another. You would better serve your community of users by adopting standards-based multimedia tools (such as html5 video).

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

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.

According to the eSoft Threat Prevention Team, there are now over 135,000 such sites sprouting up all over the Web, many of which can be found by a simple Google search. Because the sites look and feel like YouTube, many users will not check the URL to verify that it actually is the giant video sharing website.

The “media codec” that the users download is actually a trojan that infects the computer and can access sensitive data, even taking control of the entire system. Currently, only 8 of 41 virus scanners are picking up the new malware, although that will probably change as the threat becomes more widespread. People who are concerned about inadvertently visiting one of these sites should use web filters that will detect malware sites and warn them before allowing the browsers to connect.

Source: Infosecurity

A company called Smokescreen has introduced a new technology (or rather a merging of old and new technology) to produce Flash-like animated ads using software that all platforms support (Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile operating systems). The ads use a combination of Javascript and HTML5 to create ads that are nearly identical to their Flash counterparts.

The Smokescreen website lists multiple demos of their product in action, although some of them still need to work out the kinks. Technology powerhouses like Apple, Google, and Mozilla are pushing for the adoption of HTML5 video, while Adobe hopes to hold onto its claim on web animation and video. One obstacle that HTML5 proponents must overcome is the inability for current HTML5 video to display dynamic ads. Several marketing firms are working quickly to develop solutions. Current YouTube videos using HTML5 do not display ads, and those videos that do use Flash only.

HTML5 video will take the following format on your website:

<video src="crazycat.ogg" controls="controls">
We're sorry, your browser does not have HTML5 video support. Please download the video
</video>

There are a number of additional options:

autoplay – The video will start playing automatically

controls – Displays player controls

height – specifies height of video

width – specifies width

Once you have the video the way you want it, paste the code into your website, and it will work in any browsers that support HTML5 video. Since some do not, you should provide an alternate method of viewing the video as well.

When I installed it, I was not sure where I would even be able to find videos using it, but Google really does not waste any time. YouTube already has HTML5 videos encoded with VP8, and they run flawlessly. The video quality seems good and runs well in HD, without the high CPU load that usually accompanies Adobe Flash.

Yesterday, Google announced the release of their codec, along with plans to use Ogg Vorbis for audio encoding, and a new video format container based on Matroska. Collectively, this will be referred to as WebM. This could very well be the deciding factor in the HTML5 browser wars that we have been covering. Website owners and server administrators who want to give WebM a spin can find links to encoding software options on the WebM website.

Source: Webpronews.com

As with any offering you publish on your site, you want to make sure you can reach the widest possible audience and provide accessibility for those who need it. Hosting your own media server can be taxing on your system load, but there are some solutions that make it easy. I mentioned one open source solution in a previous post.

Another option is to sign up for remote video hosting. This could be as simple as a YouTube channel, which offers closed captioning and other accessibility features, or something more customized that requires monthly payments. At any rate, you will need to embed the videos on your site, and you will want to make sure the solution you choose will not slow it down. Some sites that have many embedded Flash videos, for example, run very slowly and take a long time to load, particularly on netbooks and other mobile devices. When HTML5 video becomes standard, it may be a better choice to consider.

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).

Our original post centered around Apple and Google’s unwillingness to adopt the open Theora format, citing its inferior performance quality to the proprietary and patent-laced H.264. This is still the case with both Apple and Google producing browsers that support the video tag from HTML 5 but do not support Theora. Youtube has added support for it, but it does not work in Mozilla Firefox, which, as an open source browser, cannot distribute H.264 technology.

It seems dismal, and Microsoft has still added little to the discussion, although they have at least joined it. All of this, however, might be about to take an unusual turn for the better. The Theora format was created by On2 Technologies and then released as open source later. On 17th of February, their stockholders approved a merger with Google and possibly future development on open video formats. This could be good for all parties in the end.

Source: On2 Technologies