[FFmpeg-devel] saving file directly to webserver

[Thomas Jörg]

hello guys

thanks for the good work you are doing. you are really great! i have a  
feature request, that i would like to post. hope that is does not  
disturb anybody. it's a very tricky thing. nobody has really been able  
to provide practical help up to now. so it's a real challenge.

i'm looking for a system that can join two mpeg4/h264 files on the fly  
and send the new file directly to apache for download. the two files  
are pretty large so i don't have the time to wait for the system to  
write down a new file.

or in detail:
1. a user clicks on a movie download link on a website (mpeg4, php/ 
mysql)
2. a script selects two preencoded files they are pretty large (ca. 1  
GB)
3. the two files are joined
4. the download of the new movie (the two files connected) begins
for the user it has to be like just downloading one file. the movie  
should play in quicktime player.

and now it comes: this has to happen very fast (ca. 5 secs). we only  
found solutions where the new movie has to be written down to a new  
file, before the download starts. even with a fast machine this is  
very time consuming. it also needs a lot of storage.

is there a possebility to do this directly?
i imagine something like modifying ffmpeg to accept two files as an  
input then ultimately generating the mpeg4 header and passing it on to  
the webserver to start with the download. can the movie information be  
pulled out of the two existing files? it's like an ordinary "join two  
files operation" but instead of a "save as" command there is a "pass  
to webserver" comand. or you can see it like this: the file is not  
saved locally but directly to the requesting user over the web.

would be really cool to build an application that can do this. we are  
a small group of filmstudents from berlin but we have funding for this  
project. we are willing to offer a 500? reward for anybody who can  
build such a system.

greetings



t.