Spam: The other white meat

Since my last screencast looking at the functionality of FFmpeg Wrapper, I've done quite a bit to improve the interface for transcoding. I've added an AHAH layer for file information which I think is really helpful for inspecting files. If you want a fast introduction to how to transcode files in Drupal, give it a peek.

I just committed a rather nice piece of functionality to the FFmpeg Wrapper module. Files that are attached to Drupal nodes can be transcoded multiple times by a simple interface. Once you find settings that you like, you can attach your transcoded file back to the original node.

Whether you need to create a file for download, create a web-friendly format from a file, or just want to offer a high or low bandwidth versions, any file that is attached to a Drupal node via the upload form and can be transcoded with this tool.

FFmpeg Wrapper puts a link on the file attachments list to the FFmpeg Wrapper testing tool on files that FFmpeg can transcode- which helps identify bad file types quickly.

The power and flexibility of FFmpeg is a strength and a weakness. While it provides a huge number of options, it’s easy to create a configuration that actually doesn’t work. Case in point has been my experience with Media Mover- the most common thing that people want to use it for is creating FLV files from a variety of source material.