i-flicks

Video sharing website and application.

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Overview

i-flicks pulls together several components to give a full, open source video sharing application.

i-flicks is intended for small teams or individuals who want a stand alone video presentation system. It will work with a few hundred or low thousands of videos and a handful of concurrent viewers. i-flicks originated from a desire to share family videos hosted on a home server and I couldn't find a fully featured Node implementation.

As of the time of writing this, i-flicks is still in active developmnent and the version number reflects API changes (semantic versioning), not production stability. Database changes should be additive between versions and so new versions won't overwrite your existing videos unless you switch between SQL Server and NEDB or your uploads directory is inside your node_modules folder!).

If you are interested in a larger installation or new features please get in touch as that's the best way to make it happen.

See i-flicks.com for the working example.

Follow @i_flicks

Getting started

You should be able to get i-flicks up and running with no programming experience but you will find a basic understanding of Javascript and Node.js useful.

Quick start (for those who think they know what they are doing)

Create a Node app and pass the i-flicks object to the HTTP server then start the app.

var settings = {
ffmpegPath: '/usr/bin/ffmpeg',
ffprobePath:  '/usr/bin/ffprobe',
flvMetaPath:  '/usr/bin/flvmeta',
uploadPath: '/var/uploads/i-flicks',
	mediaPath: '/var/uploads/i-flicks',
sessionSecret: 'my secret',
baseURL: 'http://localhost:3000/',
	databaseType: 'nedb',
	usersCanCreateAccount: true
 };
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer(require('i-flicks')(settings));

server.listen(3000, function() {
	var addr = this.address();
	console.log('i-flicks server is listening on %s:%d', addr.address, addr.port);
});

node app.js

Detailed install

Ubuntu Linux

Install Node.js, NPM ImageMagick, Git and FLVMeta.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | sudo bash -

or

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.12 | sudo bash -

sudo apt-get install nodejs -y

sudo apt-get install git -y

sudo apt-get install graphicsmagick -y

sudo apt-get install flvmeta -y

Install FFmpeg

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade  ?? not really required ??

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg -y

Note: because of licencing restrictions, you can get better sound quality and browser compatibility by compiling FFmpeg from source. i-flicks works with the standard download.

Windows The default settings and latest installs of the following packages should all work.

• Download and install Node.js (this will install NPM too)

• Download and install Git

• Download and install GraphicsMagick

• Download and install FLVMeta

• Download and install FFMpeg

For all operating systems Create a folder for your new project on your computer and move to that folder.
run:

npm install i-flicks

Check the runOnce file exists.  Sometimes we forget to rename it before deploying to NPM.  If it doesn't then rename the .done file:  
cd node_modules/i-flicks/views  
mv runOnce.done.hbs runOnce.hbs *OR* rename runOnce.done.hbs runOnce.hbs  

There is currently a bug in Fluent-FFmpeg which means videos in portrait mode cause a crash.
Open file below your install folder at ./node_modults/i-flicks/node_modules/fluent_ffmpeg/lib/ffprobe.js
Add "lines = lines.filter(Boolean);" to line 15. Check the Github issue for updates.

Create a node application, create a "settings" object with paths to the software installed above and require i-flicks....
For example, add this to a file called app.js

var settings = {
    ffmpegPath: '/usr/bin/ffmpeg',
    ffprobePath:  '/usr/bin/ffprobe',
    flvMetaPath:  '/usr/bin/flvmeta',
    databasePath: '',
    uploadPath: '/var/uploads/i-flicks',
    mediaPath: '/var/uploads/i-flicks',
    sessionSecret: 'enter your secret here',
    env: 'production', // development or production. 
	css: 'white.css' // white.css or black_yellow.css

 };
var iflicks = require('i-flicks')(settings);
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer(iflicks);

server.listen(3000, function() {
	var addr = this.address();
	console.log('i-flicks server is listening on %s:%d', addr.address, addr.port);
});

run:
node app.js

Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000

How to listen on port 80
Node.js requires elevated privileges or root access to listen on port 80 or 443. It isn't a good idea to do this and so something needs to forward requests to port 80 onto the Node.js port. IPTables or Nginx both work. IPTables is quicker to setup as it is installed on most Linux distrubutions. Nginx works on Windows and Linux and adds a bit more flexibility.

What about io.js, HTTPS, SPDY or HTTP2?
i-flicks works with other io.js amd alternative HTTP modules. None have been production tested but all work when tested as a Friday afternoon bit of fun.

Settings

The settings object options are as follows:

Setting	Default	Purpose
databasePath	""	Path to database file storage. Defaults to nothing and so uses the root of your application.
ffmpegPath	"/"	Path to the ffmpeg executable. For example, 'C:/Program Files/ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg.exe' (note the forward slashes) or '/usr/bin/ffmpeg')
ffprobePath	"/"	Path to the ffprobe executable
flvMetaPath	"/"	Path to the FLVMeta executable
maxFFmpegInatances	1	Number of copies of FFmpeg to run at once. If the encoding server only runs FFmpeg and has lots of processor cores then this can be high, otherwise leave it at 1 or 2.
uploadPath	"/"	Where to store uploaded files
mediaPath	"/"	Where to store encoded media files
statsDServer	undefined	If you have a StatsD server then i-flicks can log various metrics to it.
statsDDebug	undefined	StatsD debug flag.
statsDPrefix	undefined	Text prefix for statsD log metric names.
cssPath	undefined	Absolute path to a file used to override the default stylesheet.
css	white.css	Built in style skins. Values are white.css and black_yellow.css.
env	development	Environment variable. Overrides NODE_ENV for this application. If not set then uses NODE_ENV. Values are development and production.
mailgunKey	undefined	If using MailGun (free option available) then this is the key provided.
mailgunDomain	undefined	Mailgun domain.
gmailUsername	undefined	If using GMail then this is the username used to logon to GMail. Note that GMail is only suitable for small volumes of mail and Google may block the account. It is not the recommended option but it is an easy one to get started.
gmailPassword	undefined	If using GMail then this is the password used to logon to GMail.
mailFrom	[e-mail]	From address used when sending emails.
googleAnalyticsId	undefined	Your Google Analytics ID. It looks something like UA-12345678-1.
sessionSecret	undefined	A random phrase to encypt the session information.
usersCanCreateAccount	false	People visiting can create their own account. Otherwise it must be created via the toolbox.

Linux permissions

sudo -i
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www
chmod go-rwx /var/www
chmod go+x /var/www
chgrp -R www-data /var/www
chmod -R go-rwx /var/www
chmod -R g+rx /var/www
chmod -R g+rwx /var/www

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/uploads/i-flicks

Credit goes to http://fideloper.com/user-group-permissions-chmod-apache for this.

More

If you use i-flicks or would like to see a specific feature please drop Nick an email at [e-mail]. He would love to hear what you are doing.

i-flicks has a "Send" feature which allows videos to be sent from one installation to another. If you are logged in and view a video this option is available at the bottom of the video.

Errors can be viewed, users created and all sorts of other things via http://localhost:3000/toolbox. You need to be logged in otherwise it will just redirect you to the home page.

i-flicks will remember the previous volume and postion in a video for logged in users.