I want to allow users to upload video but I want to make sure that I compress and the encode the files to make them smaller in MB size while maintaining quality?
What do you recommend?
Without meaning to be rude, if you don't know the answer you are a long way away from your goals. This is not something we can say "do this" and you will be right. The answer is not possible to give because there is no one answer and there are a lot of trade offs, it;'s like how long is a piece of string or what is the best car.
To add to that, all compression methods are "loss-y." Anything that reduces the file size will reduce quality. The question is whether a viewer will be able to detect the loss of quality. When you're preparing a video for web viewing, you can get away with quite a bit of compression without it being detectable.
Yes, I know that....I am asking about best practices, is MP4 is the best used to encode video files? is it DIVX? Is it flv?
I am asking for your expertise....
Also, if a user upload a very high resolution video file, Does jwplayer do any encoding to reduce the quality of the video and size it right for fast streaming?
Definitely MP4. It can now be played on virtually every platform. The only exceptions are IE8 and Firefox under WinXP, and with JW Player, you can fall back to Flash for those. But you still need only one file. You can pump almost anything through Handbrake with default settings, plus check "Web optimized," and get an MP4 that will play anywhere.
http://handbrake.fr/
JW Player doesn't do any processing of the file at all. It's just a steering script, feeding the video to the browser and supplying its own controls, playlists, etc.
What is the right command for ffmpeg to convert any video file to mp4? shall reduce the resolution to make the file smaller too?
What are youtube 720p and 360p and 240p mean? for example if I want all my video files 360p, how I can do that in ffmpeg?
Also, how can I fast start the and moov atom to the beginning of the video file?
Large subject, far beyond the scope of this little forum (and it's not really a JW Player issue at all). Here's a starting point:
http://www.jwplayer.com/blog/transcoding-best-practices/
To make sure the moov atom is at the beginning, use:
ffmpeg -movflags fasstart
Typo: Make that:
ffmpeg -movflags faststart
Thanks MiterNeutron for the pointers.
