how to implement a web site like youtube?

I'm doing a language web site for my university language center, where students login and see videos to learn English. i have to do it like this,

person is logging 开发者_运维知识库in to the system, search using a search area and find the details,lessons and videos relevant to that videos. this functionality exactly matches the youtube scenario.

for implementing twitter like functionality we can use status-net, is there a similer library, statusnet like famous implementation for youtube or a some kind of platform or a framework like codeigniter that we can use to implement youtube like site very easily?? please suggest some options?? a open source one or a commercial one ???

and what is the best video format to use in a such web site?? flv?? mp4?? or mov???

regards, Rangana

Your best option is to use a 'cloud' based video processing service. Most have a sample project / library for many different languages and frameworks. Here is a list of a few I've tried and liked:

• http://zencoder.com/
• http://transloadit.com/
• http://pandastream.com/

The typical steps involve uploading the video files to a large 'cloud' static asset host (such as S3) through the browser. If you are inexperienced it is best to select a processor that provides an uploader (it will handle putting the files in the right spot). Of the three, Transloadit and Panda both have custom unloaders.

Usually the service will allow you to either pass the encoding settings (what formats and qualities to) output to as parameters or configure them in your account. To support all current HTML5 browsers you just need H264 (.m4a) and OGG (.ogv). However, the new trend in the video world is for WEBM (.webm) so you might want to include it as well.

Next you will receive a unique code from the web service that you must store in persistent storage (database). The web service can be configured to 'callback' (perform an HTTP POST or GET request to your service) once the video is encoded.

Once your recieve a callback you can activate your video and start dislpaying it on your pages. For displaying, if you are inexperienced I'd highly recommend you use one of the following players:

• http://sublimevideo.net/
• http://longtailvideo.com/
• http://videojs.com/

They all do similar things for different prices. My current personal favourite is Sublime Video (it offers cool light box effects and a gorgeous player).

Why do you have to re-implement Youtube when you can just use it for hosting your videos for free? Many online e-learning portals (e.g. Khan academy) do exactly that.

As far as the best video format to use -- go read about H.264/AVC. It's what Youtube currently uses.

I think you will not find already built solution ;)

But it's not really that hard. You can use existing frameworks that will make your life easier while you build account management system, the rest shouldn't be really that hard (assuming you don't really want to re-build the whole Youtube ;D ).

For playing videos, you can use JW Player. A great piece of software, you should check it out.