When acquiring videos from URL and 'Video is Flash-ready' checkbox is ticked, the node is created and video pulled in but no thumbnails are generated.

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jbrown’s picture

jbrown commented
Assigned: Unassigned » jbrown
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

You need a transcoder to grab the thumbnails, but the whole point of having the checkbox is for when there is no transcoder.
You can upload a custom preview image along with the video.

I improved the description under the checkbox:

http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=307702

mjvesper’s picture

mjvesper commented
Category: bug » feature
Status: Closed (works as designed) » Active

I guess I will change this to a feature request, then?

The scenario I have is that I am migrating videos that were previously transcoded on one site to FLV and moving them to another. There IS a transcoder and newly uploaded videos will be transcoded using FFMPEG locally. However, the use case for the checkbox was to save on the hours of retranscoding source videos if there is no need.

Another possible scenario would be using the "Acquire from URL" box to get a video from another site (ala embed codes from video sites but pulling them in locally instead) where a thumbnail isn't available and having the average user not know how to generate them.

Or if you change the size of the thumbnails up the road (or changing if they are from the beginning or 1/3 through) and need to do a sitewide rebuild of thumbnails. Or if the images become corrupted.

There is a setting to flush the thumbnail cache, but having a sitewide rebuild of preview images has multiple areas of use as a scalability concern for sites. Especially if the number of videos is in the hundreds or thousands.

Thumbnails are generated using FFMPEG, true, but those conversions are a lot quicker than encoding a whole video and can be run separately. Not retranscoding videos doesn't have to be mutually exclusive from building preview images. Rather than building them only during the main transcoding run, perhaps having an additional checkbox during the Flush Preview Images could do a refresh transcoding run for preview images only?

jbrown’s picture

jbrown commented

Yeah - there is a use case for not transcoding, but still acquiring the preview images. There could be an option for this.

Note that Acquire from URL only works for actual files at the moment, not web pages / embed codes.

I consider using pre-transcoded videos an editor-only option, as 99% of the population will get it wrong.

You can change thumbnail sizes any time you want - they are generated in-request from the raw captured images and cached.

You can also switch between first frame, frame at 1/3 duration and custom image any time, as these source images are always stored. They never need to be re-obtained.

Being able to dynamically render a preview image from anywhere in the video is a great idea, videos would have to be stored locally though, not externally (like S3).

mjvesper’s picture

mjvesper commented

I am aware that the URL acquisition is file only and I agree that the most logical use is admin/editor. There are also plenty of modules that handle embed codes.

I was unaware of the fact that both preview images were stored and that the choice was which to serve rather than which to actually obtain.

Given that, and knowing that your module facilitates local storage, CDN type storage as well as transcoding as a paid service... Being able to dynamically render an image from ANY point in a video seems more hassle than any practical gain. In reality, my assumption was that the choice of beginning or 1/3 was grabbing them dynamically based on the setting.

However, since both images are stored perhaps a better tweak would be to show one or the other image, as is the case now, OR to randomly pick between them as to which is served at page load - which some video sites do to make content appear more "fresh." That would be more of an incremental addition to the functionality of BD Video as well as the ability to Generate images without transcoding. That or integrating Image Cache?

As it is, I do like the simplicity of this setup with a little more flexibility over the Video module. My other option for the site in question is Media Mover because of the power and flexible workflows. I'm migrating a few hundred videos which is the big issue but scalability and future usage features and sustainability are a real issue for which I settle on. My needs lie in between the two.

jbrown’s picture

jbrown commented

A lot of videos have a first frame of video that isn't very good for a preview image, e.g. it fades in from black, so randomly displaying it isn't a good idea.

Please detail any concerns you have of Media Mover being more suitable for you and I will address them.

BDV can has very flexible scalability, e.g. it can push everything out to S3 / Rackspace with Storage API.

Also, BDV has Node import integration.

mjvesper’s picture

mjvesper commented

True, but the feature would be nice. Maybe the first image has an offset of a second.

The biggest issue I have now is just the preview images being generated en masse. Well, that and being able to transcode into another format than Flash.

As for Node Import, that would be helpful but the module description says that hasn't been ported to D6 which is what we're using to develop on.

matt2000’s picture

matt2000 commented

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