We recommend that JomTube is run on a Dedicated Server or Virtual Private Server (VPS). If this is not possible then we recommend you run the software on a Shared Host that supports FFMPEG, FFMPEG-PHP, MENCODER and FLVTOOL2 already preinstalled because I can guarantee that if it not installed already your host will not install it.

We strongly advise you to also check our Server Hosting Recommendations if your server does not meet the requirements. This will save you a lot of headache and time as the server that we recommend are JomTube Ready and the Server comes with all the Required Software installed.

Before you buy a Subscription Plan to Jomtube Video Gallery or install Jomtube Video Gallery to website STOP! You need to make sure whether your server is going to support Jomtube Video Gallery. If you are unsure, ask your host for advice. There is no point investing lots of time into Jomtube Video Gallery if your server does not support it. Check our server requirements and read our recommendations.

FFMPEG is a collection of software libraries that can record, convert and stream digital audio and video in numerous formats. It includes libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, and libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library. The name of the project comes from the MPEG video standards group, together with “FF” for “fast forward”. FFMPEG is free software.

The project was started by Wikipedia:Fabrice Bellard, and is now maintained by Michael Niedermayer. Most FFMPEG developers are also part of the MPlayer and VideoLAN projects, and FFMPEG is hosted at the MPlayer project server.

You can download FFMPEG for free and compile it on your server.

JomTube uses the FFMPEG tool to generate a thumbnail image of the video and can also be used to convert the original video to the flv video format.

Jomtube Design does not guarantee that the information presented in our documentation is absolutely correct and accurate. This is particularly true for the instructions on installing the third party video conversion software (FFMPEG & MENCODER) onto servers. The instructions are generic and therefore, some of you will probably experience problems relating to specific distributions. We will try to assist you with problems however, there might not be any solutions.

ffmpeg-php is an extension for PHP that adds an easy to use, object-oriented API for accessing and retrieving information from video and audio files. It has methods for returning frames from movie files as images that can be manipulated using PHP's image functions. This works well for automatically creating thumbnail images from movies. ffmpeg-php is also useful for reporting the duration and bitrate of audio files (mp3, wma…). ffmpeg-php can access many of the video formats supported by ffmpeg (mov, avi, mpg, wmv…)

JomTube Video Gallery Requires ffmpeg-php to be installed in order to to automatically extract the Video Thumbnails from the video files and also to extract the Video Duration time.

If it is installed and you set your configuration to instant extract thumbnails for uploaded videos, this process will be done just after users upload videos. JomTube will determine duration for uploaded videos and extract a thumbnail for your video.

FLVTool2 is a free command line tool for meta data manipulation of Macromedia Flash Video files (FLV). FLVTool2 can calculate a lot of meta data and insert an onMetaData tag. It can cut FLV files and add cue Points (onCuePoint). A debug command lets you see inside our FLV and the print command gives you meta data information in XML or YAML format.

JomTube uses FLVTool2 to insert video information into the FLV file.

MENCODER is a free command line video decoding, encoding and filtering tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a close sibling to MPlayer and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using different codecs.

It is also possible to copy audio and/or video unmodified into the output file to avoid quality loss because of re-encoding for example, to only modify the audio or video, or to simply put the audio/video data unmodified into a different container format. JomTube uses this tool to convert the uploaded videos to the Flash Video (flv) format. Why? There are many benefits of using the flv format, but we consider the main advantages to be widespread browser support and the economical delivery options.

You can download MENCODER for free and compile it on your server. You will need root access to install MENCODER although it could be possible to install it on a shared host depending on the hosting company. For example, we successfully installed FFMPEG, MENCODER and FLVTOOL2 on a 1and1 shared hosting account. Despite this, if you have a shared hosting account we recommend you first check whether MENCODER is already installed on the server (sorry to state the obvious!) and if it is not installed, request if it can be installed by the system administrator. Only then should you consider trying to install the package yourself, there is not reason to make extra work for yourself!

We recommend that your PHP configuration supports the following:

• PHP Version 5.0 or Higher
• The ability to use the exec() function
• The ability to use the file_get_contents() function
• The Client URL (cURL) Library
• The ablitiy to use SimpleXML
• The ablitiy to use FFMPEG-PHP

Recommended Hosting

• http://www.got-hosting.com/dedicated.htm (Jomtube Approved) I been using this Hosting and Network Managment company for Subfighter.com for over 3 years and would personally recommend them if you are looking for a hosting company that is JomTube Ready.
• http://www.hostv.com/

Other Hosts

• http://order.1and1.co.uk/
• http://www.imageleet.com/dedicated.php
• http://www.apthost.com/dedicated-hosting/

Recommended Host

• http://www.vexxhost.com/ (Jomtube Approved) This is the Hosting Service that we are currently using for the Demo Jomtube Site examples and also Jomtube.com is hosted on this low cost server.
• http://cirtexhosting.com/

Other Hosts You Can Check Out

• http://www.infrenion.com/
• http://downtownhost.com/
• http://www.apthost.com/
• http://www.crayonhost.net/
• http://imageleet.com/
• http://www.tubehoster.com/
• http://amhnetwork.com.au/ffmpegau.php
• http://www.ihubnet.com/
• http://glowhost.com/
• http://www.geekstorage.com/

Virtual Private Server