How to stream videos hosted on your personal webspace on LJ
I've been asked this a couple times, so I figured I may as well make this a public post just in case other people want to do this.
1) First you need to convert your video files to Flash video (.flv) format. I use On2's Flix, with the standard version costing $39. I've heard that the free SUPER works as well.
As for conversion settings, I recommend the following:
Video
512 KB FLV 8 (or VGA VP6-S FLV in Flix)
Use video source dimensions & use source framerate (found in the Vid/Aud tab in Flix)
Audio
MP3, 22050 Hz, 64 kBits/s, Stereo
These settings help keep the file size down while still having pretty good quality overall. Depending on your video and audio sources, you may want to increase the quality settings. Managing file size is a balancing act between overall quality and how much bandwidth you're willing to use. Once you have your .flv file, upload that to your own personal webspace, such as in a "stream" folder. The direct link to your video will be something like this:
http://www.NAMEOFYOURSPACE.com/stream/video.flv
2) Next, you need the JW FLV Player. Unzip the file and upload all of those files into a folder (flvplayer) on your webspace. The direct link to the player should look something like this:
http://www.NAMEOFYOURSPACE.com/flvplayer/player.swf
3) Lastly, you need the embedding code. When making an LJ post, I find it easier to use HTML than Rich Text. Click the "embed media" option, then enter one of the embedding codes below. The height and width take a bit of playing so you don't get funny black bars on all sides, so I'm posting a few samples here.
Default sample for a 16:9 video:
Default sample for a 4:3 video:
If you want your player to look pretty, you can upload one of these skins to the same folder as the JW FLV Player.
Sample for a 16:9 Video with the Snel skin:
Example of streaming video, 16:9 with the default skin:
Example of streaming video, 16:9 with the Snel skin:
Questions? Comments? :)
1) First you need to convert your video files to Flash video (.flv) format. I use On2's Flix, with the standard version costing $39. I've heard that the free SUPER works as well.
As for conversion settings, I recommend the following:
Video
512 KB FLV 8 (or VGA VP6-S FLV in Flix)
Use video source dimensions & use source framerate (found in the Vid/Aud tab in Flix)
Audio
MP3, 22050 Hz, 64 kBits/s, Stereo
These settings help keep the file size down while still having pretty good quality overall. Depending on your video and audio sources, you may want to increase the quality settings. Managing file size is a balancing act between overall quality and how much bandwidth you're willing to use. Once you have your .flv file, upload that to your own personal webspace, such as in a "stream" folder. The direct link to your video will be something like this:
http://www.NAMEOFYOURSPACE.com/stream/video.flv
2) Next, you need the JW FLV Player. Unzip the file and upload all of those files into a folder (flvplayer) on your webspace. The direct link to the player should look something like this:
http://www.NAMEOFYOURSPACE.com/flvplayer/player.swf
3) Lastly, you need the embedding code. When making an LJ post, I find it easier to use HTML than Rich Text. Click the "embed media" option, then enter one of the embedding codes below. The height and width take a bit of playing so you don't get funny black bars on all sides, so I'm posting a few samples here.
Default sample for a 16:9 video:
Default sample for a 4:3 video:
If you want your player to look pretty, you can upload one of these skins to the same folder as the JW FLV Player.
Sample for a 16:9 Video with the Snel skin:
Example of streaming video, 16:9 with the default skin:
Example of streaming video, 16:9 with the Snel skin:
Questions? Comments? :)