hello,

i want to make one page that will let me stream a video just the way that youtube and related sites stream them. so far i understand that the files are in flv format, and how youtube convertes avi files or mpg files to flv is a mystery to me. what im wondering is does youtube store the vidoes in its database or does it store it in a directory somewhere. (i know you might not know but what are your guesses or maybe the best way of doing it). also once stored in the database what method is used to retreive it and display the video within a flash player like youtube has.

thank you.

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For converting videos to flv, there is ffmpeg. Any website like youtube fetches the info from a database, using a query. Then you just embed a player into your page and play the movie. It's not very hard at all.

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thanks, i figured it out. now the only problem im having is trying to figure out how to place a small screenshot or thumbnail on the video such as youtube does?

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again, you can use ffmpeg to make a screen capture of a movie frame (I suggest taking a capture of the middle frame of the movie, so you don't get black screens - lots of movies begin and end with a black background). Also, ffmpeg can capture some info for you (such as the FLV metadata - total movie length, movie resolution and such).

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