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

[Alban Cousinié]

Hi guys,

 

I am currently working on developping a Media 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 aware, 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 is the ability to play remote streams
from a flash media server. For such a purpose, I need to be able to creat
"virtual" DAM 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", then provide a
remote URL as a media source. 

 

This very problematic with the DAM for 2 reasons :

 

1) The DAM allows creating a '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.

 

2) I have come up with a solution that extends tx_dam table, makes the media
type selectable in the UI and adds  a 'virtual media source' field for
specifying  a RTMP stream. So far so good. Now when I want to select that
record in the media player plugin properties (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 file located in the
filesystem). I could overcome the problem by having users creating video
placeholders as dummy text files in the filesystem, but this is really 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
to have to add another proprietary extension table for handling streaming
media while the DAM should be capable of doing the job. However this means
quite important changes to the DAM as the media record sources have to allow
manual source setting for the users, and the wizard has also to be modified
to be able to select such records. I wish we could come up with a solution.

 

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.

 

Regards,

 

Alban Cousinié

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