collective.transcode.star (0.6)

Both the naming scheme and the basic design priciples were inspired by collective.blog.star. Namely:

• Be modular. Not everyone wants everything your software has to offer.
• Be flexible. Don't assume that people want to use your software in one way.
• Be simplistic. If there is a simple way of doing it, do it that way.
• Be Ploneish. Plone already has 90% of what we need built in. Use it.

It works out of the box with standard Plone Files, providing transcoding services to web friendly formats (mp4, ogv) when uploading video content. Additionally, a jpeg thumbnail is being extracted from the 5th second of the videos and a flowplayer viewlet pointing to the produced mp4 file will be displayed inside the IAboveContentBody viewlet manager when transcoding is complete.

Transcode.star can be easily configured through the Plone Control Panel to work with any custom AT content type, as long as there is a File field in the schema. In the Transcode Settings panel you can enter a new line in the supported portal types, following the format customPortalType:fileFieldName where customPortalType the name of your portal_type and fileFieldName the name of the file field that you need transcoding for.

Support for Dexterity content types is planned for the coming versions.

For the transcoding to work you need to start the transcodedaemon instance provided in the buildout.

If your transcoding needs are high, you can configure several transcode daemons in a load balanced setup. Transcode.star will select the daemon with the minimum transcoding queue length.

All communication between transcode.star and transcode.daemon is encrypted using symmetric encryption by the pycrypto module so that the transcode server(s) transcode videos sent by the Plone site only, preventing abuse by third parties. Also extra care has been taken to transcode videos in private state (typical senario for a Plone site, when users upload a file) by using the same secure channel.