Saiweb

Oh dear oh dear …

It would appear this morning easynet is have some major issues reporting a major network outage on their status page: http://support.uk.easynet.net/support_status.aspx

Looks to me like a piece of downed routing equipment, for me at least any traffic routing via 67.17.198.202 black holes and the connection dies horribly.

Some bad routing setup there …

67.17.198.202 is listed as being in Georgia Atlanta (33.7271 -84.5785) (source: http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip).

When trying to access some .co.uk domains on known UK geo IP’s, I am getting routed via a dead US link …. nice …

Well, I wouldn’t want a boring easy friday now would I?

Whilst I wait for a reply here: http://community.flowplayer.org/node/1051

I am making version 0.1 of this plugin available.

Installation

• Unzip wpfp
• Upload to /wp-content/plugins/

Usage

• Make a new directory in the root of wordpress called “videos”
• Upload streaming media (.flv, .mp4) to /videos/
• In the wordpress panel (/wp-admin/) under plugins activate “Flowplayer for Wordpress”
• Write a post and add the tag (see example: here) *

* Where “media.flv” is your video file, 600 and 450 are the width and height to make the flash player in the page.

Notes

The version of flowplayer provided with this plugin is version 2.2.2 and is provided under the GPL license as specified by the authors of flowplayer (http://flowplayer.org/).

I am not the author or owner of flowplayer as such all copyright for flowplayer remains that of the respective parties.

I am the author of the included flowplayer.php file and have made this available under the Creative Commons license similar to the GPL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk

If the authors of flowplayer object to the distribution of their works under the original GPL license, I reserve the right to remove the download of this plugin*

* Whilst GPL does allow for me to legally redistribute the “free software” under the original license.

Remember this is version 0.1 as such this only uses the flowplayer minimum embed code, support for playlists etc has not yet been added, depending on the popularity of this plugin I may continue to work on it to provide full access to the flowplayer features (http://flowplayer.org/player/advanced.html).

Please leave a comment with feedback.

wpfp Download

Well the intrest in this subject seems to be picking up!

I am currently researching two pass encoding using libx264 and libfaac to allow low bitrate (fast loading) HD streaming.

As I figure this out you can see the results here: http://www.saiweb.co.uk/linux/very-basic-c-gdb-tutorial

The embeding is handeled using a wordpress plugin I have written, I will make this available shortly.

I will be getting part one “FFMPEG” installation up today regardless.

The thing that has realy annoyed me lately is the lack of documentation to be found for FFMPEG, the documentation you can find is by way of MAN pages, and makes the assumption you allready know all the terms that go with video encoding.

Well I am to change that.

Over the next few days I will be producing a Video set “Build your own HD YouTube” covering installation of FFMPEG, to building a basic PHP front end (without using PHP-FFMPEG), and finaly a summary covering methods you should use if you want to use the methods covered in a production envrionment.

ffmpeg comes with a tool to re-order the MP4 “atoms” (Seriously don’t ask what are MP4 atoms it’s geek for the sake of geek).

find the file in ffmpeg_src/tools/qt-faststart.c

compile with gcc


gcc qt-faststart.c -o qt-faststart


And run.


/path/to/qt-faststart /path/to/src_vid.mp4 /path/to/output.mp4


NOTE: This only seems to work for h264 encoded videos (libx264).

Just try to find documentation on this … absolute nightmare is an understatement, so here are my notes of the steps I took to compile ffmpeg with a selection of codecs:


up2date automake autoconf libtool
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faac-1.26.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faad2-2.6.1.tar.gz
wget http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lame/lame-3.98b6.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.1.3.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.0beta2.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.2.0.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xvid.org/downloads/xvidcore-1.1.3.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/x264-snapshot-20080805-2245.tar.bz2


NOTE: The above are current at the time of writing, check for more recent versions at the relevant sites.

Extract:


for i in *.tar.gz; do tar -xzvf "$i"; done
for i in *.tar.bz2; do tar -xjvf "$i"; done


cd to relevant directories and run the following:

faac & faad2: ./bootstrap && ./configure && make && make install
xvidcore: cd build/generic; ./configure && make && make install
libx264: ./configure –enable-shared –disable-asm && make && make install
The rest: ./configure && make && make install

NOTE: You must install libogg prior to libvorbis and libtheora

The following is required otherwise ffmpeg will display errors about being unable to find libraries:

i.e.


ffmpeg: error while loading shared libraries: libavdevice.so.52: cannot open shared object file


FIX:


echo '/usr/local/lib' > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/buzz-saiweb.conf
ldconfig


You must run “ldconfig” any time you install a new lib you want to use with ffmpeg!

Install FFMPEG

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg

make install


NOTE: If you allready havea checkout of ffmpeg and run an update to get the latest code, make sure you run


make distclean


Prior to running the configure line.

et voila job done ….

The information for this is VERY very sparse, so here is a summary of what I have found.

Install libx264

Get the libx264 package from here: http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html

Extracts the bz2 file


tar -xjvf /path/to/x264-snapshot-20080805-2245.tar.bz2


And now the useual


cd /path/to/x264-dir
./configure --enable-shared
make
make install
ldconfig


Get a nice error message:


[root@dev01 x264-snapshot-20080805-2245]# ./configure
No suitable assembler found. Install ‘yasm’ to get MMX/SSE optimized code.
If you really want to compile without asm, configure with –disable-asm.


You do want MMX/SSE at somepoint for the time being I am disabling this though (lack of time to find a valid RHEL source). so I added the disable asm line.

Install ffmpeg

For this I use subversion.


cd /path/to/where/I/want/sources
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
cd /path/to/where/I/want/sources/ffmpeg
./configure --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-shared
make
make install


et voila ffmpeg is now installed with libx264 (h264).

error while loading shared libraries: libavdevice.so.52: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

To fix this:


vi /etc/ld.so.conf.d/custom-libs.conf


Add the line : /usr/local/lib

And run ldconfig.

UPDATE: I am writing a full set of notes blog entry for installing ffmpeg with codecs on RHEL4

Rarely has an adware / spyware given me cause to chuckle, this little sod sets the desktop background with a nice bright blue and yellow warning shouting “You have a virus” … and places a desktop shortcut to the offending program Antivirus XP 2008.

On top of that in the case I am currently working on it has set the local machines GPO to hide the “Desktop” tab in the desktop properties.

The idea behind this is shock fraud, upon running the program it will tell you the computer is infected with thousands of malware and viruses, which wont show up on any other anti virus product, leaving you with supposedly one option … to PAY for their software …

Yeh like hell …

Fortunately the guys over at bleepingcomputer.com are on top of things, and provide removal instructions for this fraudulent software.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/remove-antivirus-xp-2008

I’ll be intrested to see if their removal tool resets the GPO.

UPDATE: Make sure after installing the malwarebytes’ software that you first run an update before scanning.

As mentioned in the bleeping computer article, if your antvirus let this program in, in the first place it may be worth purchasing the pro version of Malwarebytes’ to get the real time protection (NOTE: The freeware version will remove Antivirus XP 2008 regardless).

You can do this via with of the following links:

Saiweb Affiliate Link

Bleepingcomputer.com Affiliate Link

UPDATE 2: Malwarebytes’ removed Antivirus XP 2008, and restored the “display” tab, under desktop properties.

*** DISCLAIMER ***

As sad as it is, I have to include the following statement:

This information is provided as a self help guide only, by following the instructions provided you do so at your own risk.

”
Property Investment is the best investment opportunity thanks to the growth of the World economy.
However the property industry is cloaked in mystery and untruths such that many people are at risk of missing the real opportunity.

And what about UK Buy-to-Let? Off-plan in Romanian property or Bulgaria, Czech or Poland? Rennovate? Self-build? Property Development? Building a European Property Portfolio? Let us help you assess and understand… ” : source Propertysecrets.net

It has been a while since I posted anything about Property Investment, however with the current financial climate it may be the time again to look at Property Investment, one thing to look for in particular is “panic sales”, people worried about a Property Price Crash and bailing out before anything happens, this is text book knee jerk reaction to media ravings of a Property Price Crash, something they have been ranting about for years, and as much as I would love a cheap property I can’t see this happening anytime soon.

This means they are selling at heavily discounted prices, and whilst there is always risk involved you are buying Below Market Value making these properties ideal Investment Property, increasing the potential for profit, which is the whole idea behind Propery Investment.

If you are intrested in Property Investment and finding that ideal Investment Property, I suggest you checkout Propertysecrets.net, specifically the Property Investment page.

UPDATE: Propertysecrets.net are offering a 35% discount on 2 year membership at the moment HERE

The downside of a development server is … it’s for development.

It is  not always cost effective to have the exact same setup as you you have in your production environment …

Especially if you have a multi server setup.

So I find myself today moving /var/lib/mysql … being as the OS drive is very small, and pulling down a near 20GB database backup and then trying to rebuild the database on the same drive … well as you can imagine caused a few problems *doh*


/etc/init.d/mysql stop
mv /var/lib/mysql /raid_5/


So surely you just symlink … right?


ln -s /raid_5/mysql /var/lib/mysql
/etc/init.d/mysql start


Well then answer would be no … upon importing the backup


mysql < backup.sql
Can't create table './database/table.frm' (errno: 121)


A nice errorno: 121


/etc/init.d/mysql stop
rm -rf /var/lib/mysql
mkdir /var/lib/mysql
chown mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql
mount --bind /raid_5/mysql /var/lib/mysql
/etc/init.d/mysql start


et voila …

Data directory is relocated and the import working smoothly. Feel free to suggest any “cleaner” methods.