“…I have trouble while installing ffmpeg-php, I downloaded the tar file but while executing the make command, I obtain stop, what to do?…”

Well, it’s been a while since I played with fmpeg-php on Ubuntu 8.04, I’ve since (about a year ago, if I remember correctly) installed a 9.04 based Ubuntu LAMP server. I use that server as a local development server for WordPress based sites, video based sites (as well as traditional xhtml sites), etc.

Without too much further (verbose) discussion, here are the commands I used to get this server up and running (on Ubuntu 9.04). It’s still working today, and is a great WordPress and site development environment!

Install your base 9.04 server as is. DO NOT select LAMP server install.

Then start getting the tools and services you need installed…

Video sites will need the flvtool (Yamdi is a Meta Data injector for flv):

sudo aptitude install flvtool2 yamdi

Of course we’ll need a database:

sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev

Now we need a web server:

sudo aptitude install apache2 apache2-doc apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils libexpat1 ssl-cert

Let’s get some of the plugins we’ll need (ffmpeg-php, for example):

sudo aptitude install libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-ruby libapache2-mod-python php5 php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-ming php5-mysql php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-ffmpeg php5-json php5-ps

Let’s make sure we enable some mods:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/mods-available/dir.conf

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2enmod rewrite
# sudo a2enmod suexec
a2enmod include
# sudo a2enmod dav_fs
# sudo a2enmod dav

Save and close dir.conf

Then restart apache2:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

FTP would be nice to install, that way I can work somewhere else and upload the files if I’m not local:

sudo aptitude install proftpd ucf gproftpd
(Install as inetd because we assume only a few connections a day, not high volume, in this scenario, running as inetd will save resources – Remember, this is just for dev work, it’s not a public production server!)

I want phpMyAdmin. Please give me a GUI to create databases and users / permissions, etc.:

sudo aptitude install phpmyadmin

Test server… Overrides are not working. Let’s edit the config:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Ah ha! Default for AllowOverride is set as: none, should be set to: all

File now looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/cgi-bin/
<Directory “/var/www/cgi-bin”>
AllowOverride all
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

Alias /doc/ “/usr/share/doc/”
<Directory “/usr/share/doc/”>
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Okay, we’ll have to reload Apache for the changes to take effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

I’m getting a prompt that there is mail in the root mailbox, is there an easy way (for me) to quickly read it:

sudo aptitude install alpine

I want to read the message(s), I need to be root to do this:

sudo su

Start Apline and read messages:

alpine

Drop out of “root” after I’ve read messages and closed Alpine:

exit

Let’s get Ruby:

sudo aptitude install ruby ri rdoc libmysql-ruby ruby1.8-dev irb1.8 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysql-ruby1.8 libmysqlclient15off libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libreadline-ruby1.8 libruby1.8 rdoc1.8 ri1.8 ruby1.8 irb libopenssl-ruby libopenssl-ruby1.8 libhtml-template-perl

…and do an upgrade…

sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

Create needed links:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/local/bin/gem
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/local/bin/ruby
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/rdoc1.8 /usr/local/bin/rdoc
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ri1.8 /usr/local/bin/ri
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/irb1.8 /usr/local/bin/irb

Time for a Rails:

sudo gem install rails

Oops… access problems, maybe my default (I goofed in a couple edits)…

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

File now reads as:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/cgi-bin/
<Directory “/var/www/cgi-bin”>
AllowOverride all
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

Alias /doc/ “/usr/share/doc/”
<Directory “/usr/share/doc/”>
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Reload httpd:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Installed a WordPress site, and it’s working. nice!

Granted, the above is a fast rundown, I didn’t get into too much details (as this could easily extend to several pages worth of information). Above all, everyone’s server environment has different needs and tweaks – Experiment, have fun!

Why am I posting about this? It’s very difficult (at times) when new Linux (Ubuntu) users ask me how to do something and I cannot show them. Sometimes I’m far away, at other times it’s difficult to talk them through the necessary activities on the phone, often I do not have remote access to their systems (so they can watch what I do), and at other times there would be too much to write. Often the person I’m trying to help might not be technically savvy enough to follow my direction, but they do know how to use a web browser.

That’s where screencasting comes in!

I think many of us are aware of some of the commonly mentioned packages:

Istanbul – Every time I’ve tried it, it’s broken. Is it even in development anymore? Last news post on the site is in 2007.

Xvidcap – I often encounter problematic output (maybe a codec issue?). Is it in development anymore?

Wink – While Wink does work on the systems I’ve tried, I find it just looks horrid, especially the note explanation boxes you can add. They look cheap and tacky, not something I would use for a business (or personally). One issue that may effect Open Source enthusiasts, it that the source is closed.

recordMyDesktop – I often get sound problems with it. What is happening with development? It appears the developer bowed out in January 2009, and a new one took the reins in May 2009, but are there any changes, updates or fixes?

ffmpeg – I did try the solution presented by Embrace Ubuntu (where ffmpeg was patched), and while it did work, I found that ffmpeg (in this case) did not provide as stable an output as I expected.

Screenkast – I could not get it to work properly. Is it under development anymore? (Last update was in 2007).

As I mentioned, the above (I think) are the common tools that many of us may already be aware of. I also think the above tools are listed and discussed at length on several other sites, that’s why I chose to not go into any detail, discussing them – Been there, done that, we’ve seen them all before…

Suffice to say, I felt that I was at an impasse, I just wanted something that will work. Something that could save a screencast in FLV format for streaming across a web site. Granted the FLV format is proprietary, I wanted that because it’s a current web standard. Also, I did not want to have to manually convert the video file (as an extra step).

There are online tools such as ScreenToaster (which a reader suggested to me), but I prefer to do the work myself because the PCs I use sometimes don’t have a web connection. After asking around someone suggested vnc2swf, which I found has since moved on in development to the newer vnc2flv. It seems to me to be much more promising. I’m not suggesting that this is the ultimate solution, but it does have some great merits (and it works too).

vnc2flv

Without reading the installation notes, I tried a quick sudo aptitude install … command, but it’s not in the repositories (8.04, Hardy), and the developer does not seem to host a repository either.

I found there are a couple of requirements:

1) x11vnc

2) Python (2.4+)

The install itself is not too difficult:

Download the package from the developer at http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/python/vnc2flv/index.html#install extract the archive and (as the developer explains on his site), use python to install the app as:

python setup.py install

After which the installation script will run.

Currently this application is run off the command line. I tried this on an older test box (it has an earlier version of Ubuntu on it) and it seemed to run quite well. I should add that the developer indicates (I think) that the sound aspects are handled by a different application, using a script that automatically joins the video and audio.  Here’s the original video from the developers site:

While I’m mentioning the developer’s site, you’ll also get a lot more information (usage info) from it. I plan on installing this on my primary Ubuntu workstation after I’ve played a bit more with it on the test box. – Hopefully, this will result in some good screencasting…

Hopefully there’ll be a full GUI at some point? Either way, give it a try and tell us what you think.

Criticism aside, I just wrote a couple posts about turning your Linux (Ubuntu) computer into a multimedia system, which touched on the topic of videos:

Build a Web Developer PC and Enable Most Media Playback Using Ubuntu Linux

Building a Web Developer / Designer PC Using Ubuntu Linux – Revisited

While the focus of the above posts leaned more towards playback and web development, I did mention at least a couple video applications. In my opinion the state of video application development in Ubuntu Linux – For that matter all Linux distributions has a long way to go. In most of the current video application, I’ve found that the functionality is lacking, or that the user interface (UI) is so complicated that it makes the application a labour to use. I’m more familiar with applications such as Adobe After Effects which is Mac and Windows based (where are the Linux versions of your products Adobe? ) and I use it in a production environment. Additionally smaller “quickie” applications such as “MPEG_Stream Clip” or quickie video converters are not available in Linux with the same ease of use and functionality.

I appreciate that some may argue that After Effects is complicated. In the beginning, when learning, it is. But after you’ve been using it for a few years, it’s not as complicated. In all honesty, I use applications (such as After Effects) as my guideline to compare. There are so few available, and in my opinion, not one of the truly provides an adequate, complete production grade video application.

Video Conversion:

I operate several video streaming sites. These are sites with similar functionality to Youtube. They allow users (my clients) to upload their videos and the videos are converted by the server to flv files for streaming across the web. To accomplish this, I install various codecs and other tools on the server, most importantly ffmpeg.

ffmpeg means “Fast Forward MPEG”. It’s a command line application that is built and uses open source libraries and software. It also uses the installed video (and audio) codecs, mux/demux library, etc. to convert video’s from one format to another. As such, I’d highly recommend installing this in a Linux PC, if you’re using that box for video work.

It’s easy to install via aptitude (or apt-get):

sudo aptitude install ffmpeg

or: apt:ffmpeg

PHP scripting on the server uses much the same similar commands that we would use on our computers. Here’s a quick command (to get you going):

ffmpeg -i testvideo.mov -vcodec wmv2 -sameq -acodec wmav2 -f asf testvideo.asf

The above command specifies:

• Take my “testvideo.mov” file  (The “i” switch means “input file”),
• Convert it to the wmv2 video codec (“-vcodec”) and the wmv2 audio codec (“-acodec”),
• Use the same quality as the original video file (“-sameq”),
• Force the converted (output) file to asf (“-f asf”),
• Name that converted file “testvideo.asf”

The MAN page for ffmpeg allows you a more detailed explanation of the switches and other that are available for use.

I did a search on Youtube and found a great ffmpeg video (below):

Video Applications:

AvideMux is okay for cutting existing videos, stripping audio or video, capturing video, etc. It does not provide the functionality that some of us are familiar with in applications such as After Effects or Final Cut Pro. More information can be found on the Avidemux wiki-documentation site.

Installation:

sudo aptitude install avidemux

or: apt:avidemux

Cinelerra-CV is (the UI) closer to what we’d expect in a video production application.The functionality is much closer to those of the professional production environments, but in my opinion, it still needs work. I’ve tried Cinelerra three times now, and I don’t use it. Why?:

1. It’s a pain in the rear to get installed and working properly (at least it was for me).
2. The interface, while it does have better functionality, is still horrid (VERY ugly and not intuitive) to try and work with (which takes more time).
3. When I last tried it, Cinelerra used the “floating windows” interface (like GIMP does), which was horrible to work with (as there was no locked parent window).

However, it may work well for your environment (they way you work), so you should give it a try. To install it via aptitude, you’d need to add the appropriate repositories to your sources.list. For installing on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) – The following is directly (Copy & Paste) from their site:

For all x86 (full working on 32 and 64 bits), by Paolo Rampino:
deb http://akirad.cinelerra.org akirad-hardy main

Installation notes:

• For your convenience you can install a package for detecting your version of Ubuntu, installing akirad repository and keeping it updated.
• Just double click on the link http://akirad.cinelerra.org/pool/addakirad.deb and install it with GDebi Package Installer.

Alternatively, use the following terminal command:

wget -c http://akirad.cinelerra.org/pool/addakirad.deb && sudo dpkg -i addakirad.deb

To update the repository information press Reload in Synaptic Package Manager (Adept for Kubuntu) or use the following terminal command:
sudo apt-get update

7 are the packages available in the akirad repository:

• cinelerra (x86 and x86_64 without opengl 2.0 video card)
• cinelerra4-repack (Heroine Virtual version)
• cinelerra-generic (all x86 and x86_64 with opengl 2.0 video card)
• cinelerra-k7 (amd32 without opengl 2.0 video card)
• cinelerra-k7gl (amd32 with opengl 2.0 video card)
• cinelerra-k8 (amd k8 optimized with opengl 2.0 video card)
• cinelerra-swtc (extra Shape Wipe Transitions)

Ubuntu Hardy moved to Pulse Audio Sound driver. Since it comes with a PulseAudio ESD compatibility layer, Cinelerra can be set to work with PulseAudio. Simply open Cinelerra and go to:

Settings->Preferences->Playback->Audio Driver

Select ESound and set the following parameters:

Server: Port: 7007

• These packages set shmmax to 0x7fffffff and add non-English language support for Cinelerra.
• Please, report any package bug to akir4d at gmail dot com

for i386 (not working on amd 32 bits), by Valentina Messeri:
deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntu32/hardy ./

Installation for other systems: http://cinelerra.org/getting_cinelerra.php

Video editing in Ubuntu Linux using Cinelerra (below):

If you’d like to see the full series of the above video here is Part 1 and Part 2.

Side note: Speaking of PulseAudio (above), this is what caused my 5.1 surround sound not to work. But I posted a fix: Enable 5.1 Surround Sound on Linux – Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy.

Kino, I use more for video capture than anything else. I wouldn’t really call it a video production application. It can export different formats and has some effects. You can stich video files together. You can use it to render a dv file as well as a few other features.

To install:

sudo aptitude install kino

or: apt:kino

I think Kino is great for putting together a medley of clips with nice transition effects between them. Check out the how to video below:

The above video is using Kino in a KDE environment.

KDEnlive, I think is another great potential (I’ve not used it as I’m in a Gnome environment). Don’t get me wrong, if you’re also using Gnome, you can still try KDEnlive as all the KDE dependencies will be installed – And quite frankly, if you’re going to do that, it may be better to simple use KDE (such as Kubuntu). If you already have tools like ffmpeg installed, this one can be a bit tricky to install. Either way, here a preview video below that shows some of the features:

Realistically, the state of video development (at least on our Linux desktops) is still in its infancy. We’ve got a long way to go before we have an open source application that rivals the likes of Final Cut or After Effects. For those interested in experimenting further, one promising distribution is worth looking at: Ubuntu Studio. From their site:

“…is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. We provide a suite of the best open-source applications available for multimedia creation. Completely free to use, modify and redistribute. Your only limitation is your imagination…”

I certainly hope that this multimedia type distro can spearhead and pave the way to better video editing applications in Linux. I’d love to write a post about the Top 10 Video Applications, but right now we don’t really have 10.

Feel free to include any video applications or solutions you use, in the comments. :)

The command is simple:

sudo aptitude install openssh-server

Installing an SSH client? PuTTY:

sudo aptitude install putty

I decided to install the SSH Server via aptitude after LAMP, because I found out (the first time I did this) that updating the SSH Server would cause me to have to update the certificates as well. Doing it this way, saves me extra steps.

Needless to say, this step was very simple, but very powerful in that it allows me to manage the server remotely, in comfort. :)

1. Download the iso image from: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and burn it to a CD.

2. Order the CD from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/login-server.

Once you have a copy, make sure the BIOS on the PC is set to boot off the CD drive. Put the CD in the drive and simply restart the unit. It should now boot off the CD and display the “select language” screen as seen below.

After you’ve selected the language, you’ll be presented with the installation menu. Simply select “Install Ubuntu Server”, as seen below.

Remember that this is a server, ideally we’d like to have a static IP address for this server. There is a selectable boot option called “F6 – Other Options” where you could enter the following command to disable DHCP:

netcfg/disable_dhcp=true

At which point you will be required to manually configure the network settings. I am going to include that information below. However, for some reason I was not able to set up the network card after the installation (I could not see it) , so I used this work around instead…

I logged into the router and checked the logs so that I could get the MAC address of the network card. I then configured a DHCP reservation in the LAN/DHCP setting of the router so that the MAC address of the network card would always get the same IP address. Because I did not want to install a DNS server (my ISP made me take the DNS server down last time I set it up), I then, simply added the IP to hostname record, into the host file of each unit I wanted to connect to the web server.

During the installation (just follow the prompts it gives you), you will need to provide the following (among other obvious questions/answers):

1. A hostname for your web server (the hostname is independent of whatever domain name you’re going to use. For example, the hostname of this server is “webbox” and the domain I’ll use to access the web server on it is “local.ubuntulinuxhelp.com”).
2. I selected to use the “Guided – use entire disk” when prompted for the partitioning.
3. A username and password that you are going to remember.

You’ll eventually come to a prompt for the type of server (Software Selection), select LAMP, like the image below.

I chose to install the other components later, because I found out it will reduce some of the tweaking and updating later. During the software installation, you will be asked for a MySQL password. Write it down or don’t forget it! (You’ll need it later to use phpMyAdmin). The remainder is very straight forward, but as I mentioned earlier, here’s the static network configuration information. Remember, your network configuration addresses will probably be different from mine.

Because there is no GUI yet, we’ll be using the command line to configure the network.

Login after rebooting.

You can use a simple text editor like nano, vi, etc.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

For those who left DHCP enabled, look for this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

and change it to this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static

Under the line that says “iface eth0 inet static”, you’ll enter your network information. An example of mine is:

address 72.138.51.130
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 72.138.51.0
broadcast 72.138.51.255
gateway 72.138.50.1

So the file would look something like this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 72.138.51.130
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 72.138.51.0
broadcast 72.138.51.255
gateway 72.138.50.1

Additionally, I made sure the host file contained the following information:

127.0.0.1 localhost webbox
172.138.51.130 local.ubuntulinuxhelp.com webbox

After configuring the network interface, restart the network using the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

The basic LAMP installation should be complete. :)

Introduction:

This is the introductory post to a full series where I’ll be posting how I installed an Ubuntu Linux LAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP and cgi-bin) server with a GUI (I needed to use it as a desktop PC at the same time), the appropriate media playback codecs (flash, DVD, MP3, Quicktime MOV, WMV, WMA, MP4, M4A), OpenSSH, PureFTP and FFMpeg (FFmpeg, FFmpeg-PHP, Mplayer, Mencoder, flv2tool, LAME MP3 Encoder, Libogg, Libvorbis).

This “hands-on” project is broken into topics:

1. Hardware Installation.

2. LAMP installation with cgi-bin.

3. Installation of OpenSSH.

4. Configuration of the First Website.

5. Installation of PHPMyAdmin.

6. Configuration of cgi-bin and SSI.

7. Installation of the Ubuntu Desktop and Media Codecs and MS fonts.

8. Installation of DVD Playback Capability.

9. Installation of PureFTP.

10. Installation of Webmin and Usermin.

11. Installation of FFMpeg and Related Packages (and ionCube).

12. Troubleshooting.

Needless to say, this did take me some time to do as I am not a Linux expert (rather self-taught). But… it’s works and I’ve all my rough notes to type here. That’s part of the reason why I’d not posted, here on the blog, in a few days! ;)

Why did I do this? I wanted a web server I could use for internal projects and to test Open Source web systems (CMS, billing, eComm, blog, etc.) I also wanted to have a more updated (hardware) system that could better work with the newer Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 OS.

Hardware :

Shuttle SN68SG2 Socket AM2 Barebone – NVIDIA 7025, Audio, Video, PCI Express, Gigabit LAN, USB 2.0, Firewire, Serial ATA, 250 Watt Power Supply.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor ADA4200CUBOX – 2.20GHz, 1MB Cache, 1000MHz (2000 MT/s) FSB, Windsor, Dual-Core, Retail, Socket AM2, Processor with Fan.

Kingston 1024MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Memory (2 of these for 2GB).

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard Drive – 7200, Browser Problems – Creating a Linux Based Virtual Box – Part 1 of 2 16MB, SATA-300, OEM.

DVD burner: LG GSA H55N Super-Multi Disk Drive 20×20×12

(More info about the hardware here: Browser Problems – Creating a Linux Based Virtual Box – Part 2 of 2).

Software:

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition (64-bit)

(You can download the software from here: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download or order free Server CD’s from here: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/login-server).

Hopefully many of you will have a bit of fun with this (I did) and that you’ll be able to bookmark this and return when needed. As always, helpful comments are always welcome.

Enjoy!
:)