[TYPO3-dam] New DAM based media player + Virtual file references in the DAM

[Alban Cousinié]

Hi guys,

 

I am currently working on developping a multimedia library frontend plugin :

It is expected to list the audio/video medias based on their categories and
archive flag and to allow users to focus on a media to visualize it using
the media player.

It should be capable of showing up videos, audio and images using the JW
media player at first (which unfortunately should be licenced for commercial
use), than I may add 

later support for akamaï's open video player
(http://www.openvideoplayer.com/) when the new release based on the new
Adobe's open source Media Framework initiative Actionscript 3.0
(www.opensourcemediaframework.com) will be available.

 

My goal is to have this plugin DAM based, and so far picking a physical
video file from the DAM works nice.

 

But I am currently facing one big issue related to the design of the DAM : 

 

One feature wich is mandatory for me in this project is the ability to play
remote streams from a flash media server. For such a purpose, I need to be
able to create "virtual" DAM media elements : elements that appear in the
database as records with all the metadata required to display their
information properly, but which don't exist as files in the filesystem
because they are distant RTMP streams or, say, youtube videos. 

What I expect to do is to have users manually create a "media" record in the
"media" folder, set its media type to "video" or "audio", type in the
interesting metadata, then provide a remote URL as a media source. 

 

This very problematic with the DAM for 2 reasons :

 

1) Typo3 allows creating a DAM 'media' record manually, but won't allow the
users to set the media type, nor the media source (path+filename) manually
because these properties are read only due to the fact the DAM only expects
media records to be created by the indexer by design.

 

2) I have come up with a solution that extends tx_dam table, makes the media
type selectable in the UI and adds  an 'advanced media source' field for
specifying  a RTMP stream. So far so good... 

Now when I want to pick that record in the media player plugin flexform
(wich opens up the DAM media wizard), I can't find any record created
manually because the DAM wizard appears to only look for records which have
a matching file located in the filesystem). I can overcome the problem by
having users creating video placeholders as dummy .txt files renamed to .flv
in the filesystem, but this really is not handy.

 

I do really like the DAM and find it a great idea to have come up with such
an asset management tool for centralizing all Typo3 media management. I
beleive it should be able to handle all media types and it would be too bad
if I had to add another proprietary extension table for handling streaming
media while the DAM should obviously be capable of doing the job. However
this means quite important changes to the DAM as the media record have to be
fully editable for the users, and the wizard has also to be modified to be
able to display records that don't match a file in the filesystem. I wish we
could come up with a solution for this.

 

One last problem I'm facing is when I filter the records in the DAM wizard
using the video selection, only .avi and .wmv video types appear as
available under the 'video' entry of the selection, while I have numerous
.flv and f4v files indexed in the filesystem. If anyone can instruct me on
how to add .flv and .f4v video types to the selection filter, that'd be
helpful.

 

Best regards,

 

Alban Cousinié

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