I want to have a media file that I can stream at multiple bitrates using FFMPEG (for encoding and multiple bitrate generation) and Flash Media Server (for streaming).
In "LIVE BROADCASTING" ffmpeg made multiple bitrate videos from a single bitrate source but there were no files for the different bitrates. A file would be created for different bitrates when a viewer requested that bitrate streaming video but when a request was terminated the generated file was deleted.
So I searched in Flash Media Server and found (hds-vod), but in hds-vod I should create one file for every bitrate, for example if I have 2000 videos in my archive with HD quality (1024 kbps) I should make 4 videos with different bitrates from one video and together I have created 10,000 videos.
So to have 2000 videos in five bitrates (1024k, 760k, 320k, 145k, 64k), and now I have 10,000 videos. I have space for 2000 videos and I don't have free space in my server for 10,000 video files.
I want to stream "ON-DEMAND" videos in my server and not have the different bitrate files be continually generated like this.
Does anyone have any advice?
Thank you
Well, you will have to decode-encode video each time you want to generate video with a different bitrate. It is up to you if you want to save the result of reencoding into a file, or just stream it. I would save it into a file, because:
It makes no sense to waste the CPU cycles to reencode the same video again and again if you watch it more than once, or if you have several users watching the same video.
Your machine might not be powerful enough to do reencoding in realtime while keeping the proper frame rate, especially with HD videos and especially if you have multiple users.
This is why it is better to reencode video and store the file in advance. Storage is cheap nowadays.