handling member-only thumbnail page

[webhead]

I'm looking for ways to improve how a site I host, my brother's weekly newspaper, allows subscribers to view PDFs, jpegs, and mpegs by clicking on thumbnails.

We first tried (years ago) to just upload all the files via ftp and have the display page make thumbs on the fly. But of course that made page loading very slow. So we switched to making the thumbnails manually and uploading them too. Twice the files and time to prepare, but faster page loads for the subscribers.

We could use something like Photobucket if it was for the public, but when each subscriber has their own login this won't do. Ideally we'd like to just have a bulk uploading form that would create all the thumbnails, links, etc., which would save us time while still providing the page of thumbnails the subscribers are familiar with. But I don't know how to make thumbs of PDFs and mpegs via php.

Any ideas?

[Pawel Kowalski]

I'm not familiar with how you can make a thumbnail from a pdf or mpeg file in PHP. But if you are currently doing everything by hand it might be a lot eaiser to have an upload form where if you arent uploading a jpeg you can make your own screen shot and have the script make the thumbnail automatically. With Adobe Acrobat you can take a PDF and automatically export it as a jpeg, so that shouldnt add a lot of overhead for your application. With mpeg you would need to take a manual screenshot then upload that (although Im sure there is something out there that can take screen caps of mpeg with all the you tube clones, I just dont have the time to search around).

[webhead]

I know there are php scripts out there for making thumbs of websites (screen captures), but they seem to depend on certain components being installed with php, and I just don't know php installation well enough to monkey with it.

Making thumbs from jpegs via a form is pretty easy, but I haven't yet found a php script that would also do videos. But I'm wondering how places like Photobucket create thumbnails on the fly during upload. Maybe they can only do that after they've converted it to .swf, which is also mysteriously automatic.

Anyway, in my old age I'm getting less inclined to learn new scripts and would prefer to find some piece of software for cheap.

[Ron]

anyway, in my old age i'm getting less inclined to learn new scripts and would prefer to find some piece of software for cheap.

amen!

[jason]

Most of the "host your own YouTube" scripts use FFMpeg to handle converting the video and making screenshots. JPC has it installed on their SDX servers. I haven't used it myself, but looking at their site, they seem to have pretty good documentation.

--Jason

[webhead]

Thanks Jason, I'll check that out.

[webhead]

Question though: Since I'm on a vps, would that be something I'd have to put in a ticket for? Or can I just upload it?

[JPC-Anoop]

Hi,

You have complete root access and you can install ffmpeg in the vps. If you're not sure, please open a ticket with the vps login details and we can install it for you.

[webhead]

Thanks, JPC-Anoop.

I'm going to wait until I get an answer from my brother as to whether he wants to try this. He's on vacation right now, and then he will "think about it" for a loooooonnnnnnggggg time. :-)

[jason]

You can probably install ffmpeg through your VPS' package manager (i.e. yum, apt-get, etc.). Note though that it is pretty processor and memory intensive to process video, so depending on your VPS' specs you may or may not be successful in getting it to work as you want.

--Jason

[webhead]

Thanks Jason, I'll pass that along. It's a weekly paper so uploading would only be once a week, but sometimes they have one or two videos and other times there's a dozen or so. So I'm guessing this wouldn't be a big deal if it's done during slow hours.

Not sure about how playback affects bandwidth though. But that would be something to keep an eye on in the site stats.

[Vin DSL]

I'm a big believer in YouTube. Why use your bandwidth when you can use Google's???

I love what they did over here (you might want to watch this "Crash Course", BTW. You won't forget it! )...

http://www.chrismartenson.com/sites/...=560&width=760 (Chris Martensen Crash Course)

It looks better on his web site, in a LightBox container, but it's easier for you to find with a direct link...

Here's the source: http://www.chrismartenson.com/ (thumbnail is in the upper left corner)

I'm assuming this feature is available to authors on YouTube.

If I can find out how to do this, I'm going to incorporate it in my production site.

Anyway, just speaking out loud...

[webhead]

Oh I agree, I'd prefer to let someone else worry about the nuts and bolts and bandwidth. The issue is making it so subscribers don't have to login twice, and there are always still shots too.

[jason]

Not sure about YouTube, but I know that when you upload to Google video you have the option of making videos private. When you do that, they won't appear in the public search, so in order to watch them someone would have to know the proper URL. You could then embed the videos on your private site and users could log in and watch them there, streamed from Google and using Google's bandwidth. The only downside to doing this (and I think this applies to YouTube as well) is that videos need to be approved before they are made available, public or private, so you can't be sure of exactly when they will be available. When dealing with deadlines this can be an issue.

I used Google video once in my old job. I had a bunch of presentations that a faculty member wanted posted to the web. I asked our IT group for space on the Flash streaming server and, when my request went unanswered for two weeks and my client started getting antsy, I decided to upload them to Google video. Within a few days I had his site done. Google was supposed to be a temporary measure, but since the IT group was so slow to respond to anything, Google became the permanent home for those videos and all future ones for that site. They are all private, so they con only be accessed through the school site, not through the Google Video site.

--Jason

[webhead]

Hmm... I'll check out the features of both, especially to see if they'd also support stills. People can presently click for a larger image and then download if they want, but it would also probably be nice to present the images as a slide show.