anyone excited to team up to create an enhanced video plugin for elgg?

i am beginning the process of creating a new version of 'videolist' for elgg and would appreciate assistance from anyone who can assist me.

features i intend to include:

  • on-server videos - integrated in with external videos (using the file plugin).
  • integration of a media player - currently i am using projekktor - though may possibly switch for stability reasons.
  • support for different sizes of video thumbnails from external sites.
  • support for more external sites than the default videolist support scope.
  • support for playlists (projekktor supports its own approach to youtube style playlists and also supports youtube videos directly, so youtube videos can be played inside your own themed media player).
  • many configuration options for the admin.
  • option: video river entries load as images and are replaced by a media player when clicked.

other features can be added too, however, these are my current list.

  • i raised this issue of access/streaming on the video.js github page and the coders there were unable to assist, since php/elgg are beyond their knowledge. they advised to question on stackoverflow..
    so i did that and the question was blocked for being too complex and also since i refuse to use capital letters in my text (ridiculous). ;(
    so i return to the elgg community. i am still looking for a solution that is server agnostic.
     

  • the question was blocked for being too complex

    Oh please tell me you are joking.

    Did you manage to have a beta version of the video plugin?

  • no, not joking. i am now boycotting stackoverflow for being too dogmatic, controlling and elitist.

    there is a beta version of the code, yes - it's on github here:
    https://github.com/propertunist/elgg-multimedia

  • to be fair, the complexity of the challenge is why i haven't already found a solution of my own creation.
    ultimately i am really only hacking at php, nginx and elgg - i haven't fully read the documentation for any of them (which is mostly because i have never found any formal and complete documentation for them that provides a cohesive overview. the php docs are probably most complete and i haven't read all of them yet.

  • i have returned to this now since i am finding that playing back large videos on my site totally block's the entire browser from using the web at all in other tabs (even when the video is not playing!).

    i presume this is because the streaming functionality is not active and the browser is downloading the entire video at full speed in the background - though i am not 100% sure of that.

    if anyone has any tips or solutions for how to successfully stream video from ellg's filestore i am more than ready to hear them!

  • Which one is getting slow: the browser or the internet connection?

  • i just tested again and now the slowdown is not so noticable. i think it was the internet connection and not the browser itself that was the issue. the browser interface was not effected. (edit: actually the slowdown appears to be related to the browser connection process - since i could not connect to the elgg community as long as the tab was open in my own site that contains the video player).

    in any case though, the slowdown is not the major problem here. the slowdown is a symptom of the fact that i am not able to activate streaming for videos on my server via nginx when they are served from the elgg filestore. i have had several conversations with core elgg coders, nginx coders and the coders fo the video player i am using (i have used 2 and spoken with both sets of coders) and so far no-one has been able to provide the answer to what might appear initially to be a simple requirement!

    n.b. i have made local changes to the multimedia plugin code here that are not on github yet - mostly relating to the thumbnails and a css change that is a known bug with the video.js player - fixing an issue where the thumbnail image/ poster is not hidden when the video is played back.

  • Hey everyone,

    I know I'm late to the party but here's what I've got:

    I've taken the core file plugin from elgg 1.10.2 and modified 5 files. now it

    1. plays audio & video in the file plugin
    2. plays audio & video on the river
    3. plays the files directly from the filestore and obeys the elgg privacy layer
    4. no flash, no 3rd party plugins javascript etc...
    5. audio seek works, video seek does not (yet)

    but it does something that the default file plugin does not:

    It plays audio & video files

    it's not perfect but I think it's a good starting point & I'd Love to get some feedback on it.

    here's the link:     https://community.elgg.org/plugins/2043782

    Thanks

    Ray