Version 1.1.0 concern

Both FFmpeg and FFprobe include tons of codecs. One of the reasons it's the best Linux has to offer. It can convert practically anything. They are also static builds which make them even larger.

During my quick crash course last night I found this thread on Stack Overflow. From what I can gather, one of the files is filled with codecs to cover every contingency and these aren't needed in the case of Geek_Girl and myself. They also brush over other methods of reducing file sizes, but they didn't mean a great deal to me.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22898112/why-my-ffmpeg-libs-are-so-large

I may wait until you give the FFMPEG bloat a little extra thought over the next couple of days because I now want to make an effort to convert my heavily modified Dolphin site.

Thanks for taking this on so soon after putting in so much effort to release 1.1.0

I am actually going to address this now before it becomes a problem. If you having problems uploading, then others might also, so i will replace the packages within a couple of days. No version change will be made. Changing the version number would require the previous version be installed first which would defeat the purpose of doing this.

What i am going to do is simply provide separate windows and linux ffmpeg packages. The sounds and video modules will not install unless the ffmpeg package is installed.

This will reduce the size of the actual Cheetah install zip package to 18.5mb. But it will also required a separate download for those that want to use the sound and video modules, those that don't won't have to install that extra package.

Unfortunately, the package will still need to be installed even if your only going to use the embed option because i believe ffmpeg is used to get thumbnails for the embeded videos, so for now it will still be required even for embeds.

One possiblity is to make them separate downloads that can be gotten from your server.  Not all sites allow video and sound uploads; some do allow embedding.  I am currently working on a site (Cheetah based) that don't allow videos to be uploaded; members can embed youtube videos and have to use youtube for their video hosting.  So only the embed option is set in the uploader.  However, I think ffmpeg is still used to get the thumbnail for the video.  Is there a way to grab a thumbnail from the video using something other than ffmpeg?  OK, that wasn't entirely clear.  When a YouTube video is embedded in the Video album; how are the thumbnails for the different areas generated; is that done using ffmpeg?

Thanks Deano. I've just finished a crash course and I'm not the only one showing concern. Having had a quick read on the net and listening to you, maybe you could consider these as optional modules - Enhanced Audio, Enhanced Video, but distribute them separately. By this I mean, for anyone who wishes to upload Audio or Video. I don't allow either and I think others may be the same. I only allow YouTube embedding of videos and I use Modzzz's Radio module. Thus it would seem that a person in my position won't get any value from FFMPEG whilst others may benefit greatly.

I'll try what you suggest tomorrow and report back.

Yea, sorry. It's something i need to reconsider in the next version.

The copies of ffmpeg were intended to be as a convenience, but i suspected it might cause a issue. It is the bulk of the package size.

ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe can be removed. Those are windows versions and are not needed unless you have a windows server. The ones without the .exe extension need to remain for linux. You should also be able to safely remove the one from the flash folder. It was left there just in case i missed something in the code. It will be removed at some point. The flash folder will also be removed at some point as well. However some of those scripts are still in use so the full flash folder cannot be removed yet.

ffprobe was added to allow the script to gather information on uploaded videos and mp3's. It's what allows the script to determine if the file has to be converted or can be made available right away.

I too was also quite surprised by the size of those files.

If all distros of linux would include installs of ffmpeg and ffprobe by default, i would not even have to include those files. That would reduce the script package size down to 18.5mb

I suppose i could make ffmpeg and ffprobe a server requirement for the video and sound modules to work. That would allow me to distribute a package that's only 18.5mb in size.

Hi Deano, I'm having problems uploading the new version to my server. A quick check shows that the script has drastically increased in size from 62 meg for Version 1.0.0 to 342 meg for version 1.1.0. This is a five-fold increase in size.

On checking, I see that the new FFMPEG folder in the Plugins directory is a whopping 281 meg. I also see that the original ffmpeg.exe file (29 meg) is still in the Flash Directory thus making the ffmpeg component of Cheetah well over 300 meg . Can I please ask what a program requiring 281 meg of code to achieve something actually achieves? As a matter of personal interest, do you know how much of that code is actually used by Cheetah?  It just sounds like massive bloatware to me and I'm asking with some concern because the critics out there considered Dolphin to be bloated.

I was honestly hoping that the removal of flash would have reduced the size of the script, not increase it five-fold.

Regards

John