Seyret

From Joomlaholic Wiki

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Supported Video Servers 1.2 Standard and Pro Versions 1.3 Upgrading to Pro 1.4 Moving Pro License 2 Installation 2.1 Fresh Install 2.2 Upgrade 2.3 Uninstall 3 Administrator Panel 3.1 Categories Management 3.2 Videos Management 3.3 Ads Management 3.4 LongTail Video Ads 4 Site Front End 4.1 Adding Videos 4.2 Video Server Plugins 4.3 Uploading Videos 4.3.1 Server Configuration for Uploads 4.4 FLV Conversion 4.5 Thumbnail Extraction 4.5.1 getID3 Installation 4.6 SEF Configuration 4.6.1 Local configuration 4.6.2 Artio SEF 5 Troubleshoot 5.1 Connection Problems 5.1.1 file_get_contents 5.1.2 cURL Library 5.2 Javascript Problems 5.2.1 Mootools 5.2.1.1 Problems with older versions 5.2.1.2 Problems with JQuery 5.2.2 AJAX 5.2.2.1 index2.php Problem 5.2.2.2 seyrethttp Problem 5.3 Session Ownership

Overview

Seyret is a native Joomla component that provides functionality of video gallery on your site. You can add videos from more than 30 video providers. Also you can add videos from you own servers. With its detailed permissions system, you can define almost every rules for your system. You can control user uploads, voting system, commenting and whatever you want.

Supported Video Servers

Seyret uses plugin system for supported video servers. This gives flexibility to easily update system if something change in server side. We currently support more than 30 video providers, like google, youtube, break, dailymotion, metacafe etc. You can see an up-to-date list on plugin status page.

Standard and Pro Versions

There are two versions of Seyret. In pro version there are some more features. A very important point is that, you have unlimited version upgrade option with pro. This means you'll pay only once for Seyret Pro. You can find a brief feature list here.

Upgrading to Pro

In a few minutes, you can upgrade to pro. You will only need to read instructions. First go to Seyret admin panel. Click the donations menu from tree menu. On donations page, you'll se two columns. On right column, you can see pro upgrade process. Click one of the Paypal buttons. A new page will be opened with necessary information included. After you finish Paypal process, return to Donations page again. Now click the Upgrade to pro button. You'll see your donation is approved automatically. After refreshing your page, as a last step you will need to update your pro definitions. That's all. You are using Seyret Pro now.

Moving Pro License

Moving your pro license is so easy. First please goto your Seyret administration page on your pro site. Click Donations menu. You'll see a "Request Coupon Code" on Donations page. Click it and you'll get a coupon code. Just select and copy it. Next, goto your non-pro site. Click the "I want to use Seyret coupon" link. Paste your coupon code and submit. Your pro license is moved. Don't forget to update pro definitions on your new site.

IMPORTANT: Local installations have extra security protections. So if it is not so compelled, do not move your pro license from a live domain to a localhost installation. Otherwise it will not work automatically on localhost.

Installation

Seyret has an advanced installation and upgrade system. Both installation and upgrade will go smooth and easy. Just follow the steps correctly.

Fresh Install

First download the latest package from Joomlaholic. Go to Joomla component installation interface and follow these steps.

STEP-1 Select com_seyret.zip and click Upload File&Install button.

STEP-2 If installation is successful, you'll see an Upload component: Success message

STEP-3 Now Seyret files are installed but Seyret database tables are not yet. To complete installation you should go to Seyret configuration panel from Components menu. You will see a database installation screen. After you click the image laid on left column, installation will be completed.

STEP-4 When you see this screen, it means installation is finished. On right column, you can see latest version announcements, general messages and special messages for your site.

Fresh Install Step 1

Fresh Install Step 2

Fresh Install Step 3

Fresh Install Step 4

Upgrade

In upgrade process of Seyret, database tables will not be uninstalled. So you will not lose any video informations from old version. But we advice you to have your database backups.

Before upgrade operation take your database and theme customization backups...

To upgrade seyret, follow these steps.

STEP-1 Go to Joomla component management interface. Uninstall Seyret component via generic joomla uninstallation process.

STEP-2 Install the new version of Seyret.

STEP-3 Go to Seyret configuration panel from Components menu.

Uninstall

To uninstall Seyret, first you should go to configuration panel. Click Uninstall from the tree menu laid on left side. Click the bottom image to uninstall database tables.

This operation will uninstall only Seyret database tables.

After that, you should go to Joomla Component Install/Uninstall Manager and remove Seyret Component to complete uninstallation.

Uninstall

Administrator Panel

From Joomla administration page, go to Seyret menu. In the first usage of Seyret, a new Joomlaholic user id will be generated for your site. This user id is unique for your site and in operations related to Joomlaholic services, this user id will be used.

Categories Management

Before adding videos to your site, create categories for your videos. To create a category, click "Categories" from tree menu. Then click "New" from Joomla toolbar. Enter the name of category and select the parent category. When you create a category, a directory for local videos will be created automatically. If any problem occurs or you decide to change that directory, you can edit after it is created.

For any reason, to re-create the directory for a category, clean the directory address 
from inputbox in "category edit" interface. Then save.

Videos Management

You can add local videos or videos from other servers in Seyret. Adding videos from remote servers like Youtube, Google etc is achieved best from frontend. For backend side, you will see local videos here.

Video categories have their own category tree under seyretfiles directory. Seyretfiles is as default, if you want you can change this from configuration panel. You should upload your video to the related directory and thumbnail of video to _thumbs directory under related directory. Here you can use FTP as best and usual way.

To add a local video to your video gallery, click "Videos" from tree menu and then click "New" button.

First, select the category of your video. You will see that video files and thumbnail files are listed in the list boxes. You can preview a thumbnail by clicking on it. You only need to enter video title, video details and other attributes. You can select video access level, publish status, date, and owner of video. Of course default is 62, that means "Administrator". When you select your video file and thumbnail, related server codes will be updated automatically.

Don't change anything from server code boxes if you're not sure what you do.

For remote video servers, like youtube, please use frontend of Seyret. Backend support is not ready yet.

Adding new video

Server Codes

Ads Management

With Pro version of Seyret, ad management features will be enabled. There are two kinds of ad system for Seyret: Image ads and video ads. Using these ad systems, you may increase your income.

THIS FEATURE IS REPLACED WITH A NEW AD SYSTEM: Longtail Ad System ON VERSION 0.2.8.1

LongTail Video Ads

LongTail Video is the premier destination for online video solutions. Whether you're a webmaster looking for the best website player; a consumer looking for a great desktop player; a publisher interested in driving more traffic to their site or monetizing videos with ads, LongTail Video can help. The Company's media players have streamed over a billion videos and their AdSolution serves millions of pre-, mid- and post-roll ads every day.

You can use LongTail Video ads system with Seyret easily. Please check our video tutorial on this subject.

Site Front End

You should create a menu link to place Seyret in your site front end. Go to administration panel of your site. Follow Menu->mainmenu, you'll see a list of your main menu items. From toolbar, click New button and then select component as menu type. In next screen you'll see a component list, select Seyret and save after you fill other areas.

In your site front page, when you click Seyret menu, you'll see a toolbar, a video area, a video list and video categories list as default. If you login your site with administrator access level, you'll see a secondary toolbar below the default toolbar: moderation buttons.

Adding Videos

When you click Add Videos button, you'll see an inputbox and an Apply button. You only need video link that you want to add. For true format of video links, please see plugin status page. You'll see link samples for all video providers. After you paste the video link to inputbox, click Apply button. In a few seconds you'll see video details with thumbnail. If you want, you can change video title or video details. If you have rights, you'll see some important details for video. To prevent fraudulent usages, don't give access to server details to everybody. If you have administrator rights, publish status will be Yes as default to make it easier. If something goes wrong and you don't get correct video details, check your video link format. If it is correct then contact to author of the component via forums and inform about that video server plugin.

Video Server Plugins

Seyret works with video server plugins to make adding new video server types easy. All packages are bundled with Seyret now. In forums if a new plugin is released, just download it and copy under com_seyret/plugins/videoserver directory. Seyret will recognize it automatically. Plugins have three important functions.

• Gleaning video details when you add a link.
• Video embedding
• Generating video download links.

Don't forget that, all these functions are related to video server pages. So if they change something, our plugins may misfunction. In that case please inform us. You can see latest status of our plugins from plugin status page and can see link examples for plugins.

Uploading Videos

You can set you configuration and permission system to allow users uplaod videos on your server. If you are a Seyret pro users, a nice, upload progress bar will appear on video upload page. After upload is finished, it will be processed by Seyret and an AJAX input form will show up including a thumbnail selection system.

Server Configuration for Uploads

Most of the host providers keep upload variables in its original value in php settings. Usually these values are too small that you cannot upload a big video on your server. To use a video script on your box, you need to change some php settings. The best way to change these settings is contacting your host provider. If they won't change these settings, but they give rights to your account to override php settings with a local php.ini file, you'll need to edit your own php.ini settings. You set some php variables, then upload your php.ini file to your web root directory. You will need to change following variables:

file_uploads = On
post_max_size = 60M
upload_max_filesize = 60M
max_execution_time = 60 

Of course these settings are only sample. You can define your own values for these variables.

FLV Conversion

Seyret can convert your uploaded videos to flv. Video conversion process needs some third party programs. Best known converter program is ffmpeg and Seyret uses ffmpeg for this purpose.

ffmpeg Installation

The best way to install ffmpeg on your box is contacting your host provider. Whether you are on a dedicated server or not, host providers usually install ffmpeg on your box on your demand. Some shared host providers don't install ffmpeg, but give permission to compile it yourself. There is a nice documentation on http://netbrix.net/archives/20 to install ffmpeg and some other scripts on shared hostings.

You need only LAME and ffmpeg installed basically, but also you can install some more codec libraries for more compatibility. You can compile ffmpeg with LAME support on a shared host by following these steps:

Of course you need SSH login first. You can use PuTTY to login via SSH. Prepare the directory structure

mkdir bin
mkdir lib
mkdir tmp
chmod 777 tmp
chmod 775 bin
chmod 775 lib

Export some environment variables

export TMPDIR=$HOME/tmp
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib:/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export CPATH=$HOME/include:/usr/local/include:$CPATH
export LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib:/usr/local/lib:$LIBRARY_PATH
mkdir src
cd src

Install LAME

wget http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lame/lame-3.97.tar.gz
tar -zxvf lame-3.97.tar.gz
cd lame-3.97
./configure "--prefix=$HOME" "--enable-shared"
make
make install

Install ffmpeg

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg/
./configure "--prefix=$HOME" "--enable-shared" "--enable-libmp3lame" "--extra-cflags=-I$HOME/include"  "--extra-ldflags=-L$HOME/lib"
make
make install

That is it. ffmpeg is installed with lame support. Now, you can test your installation on SSH with success. But there is a quirk. It needs some exported environment variables to run. You need to export these variables within php to make run ffmpeg correctly. Seyret has the solution. From your Seyret configuration panel, go to Conversion tab. You'll see "Execute before ffmpeg" inputbox. You should write these export commands like following.

export TMPDIR=[yourhomepath]/tmp; export PATH=[yourhomepath]/bin:$PATH; 
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=[yourhomepath]/lib:/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; 
export CPATH=[yourhomepath]/include:/usr/local/include:$CPATH; 
export LIBRARY_PATH=[yourhomepath]/lib:/usr/local/lib:$LIBRARY_PATH;

Don't forget to change [yourhomepath] with your home directory path. It will be like this: export TMPDIR=/home/joomlaholic/tmp; ... Don't use $HOME variable here, php confuses. Don't use any line breaks and don't forget to put semicolons. If ffmpeg is installed by your hosting you won't need "Execute before ffmpeg" value. Then leave this inputbox blank.

Of course you should enter FFMPEG Path correctly. If ffmpeg is installed by your host provider, they will inform you about this path. Will be like /usr/bin/ffmpeg or similar. If you've installed ffmpeg on a shared hosting yourself, it will be like /home/joomlaholic/bin/ffmpeg .

If you are on a Windows hosting, you should download precompiled packages from . Extract all binary files under /seyretfiles/tools/converter folder. Then your ffmpeg path will be like c:/[yourhomepath]/seyretfiles/tools/converter/ffmpeg.exe

Thumbnail Extraction

Seyret needs only ffmpeg installed on your box to extract thumbnails. If it is installed and you set your configuration to instant extract thumbnails for uploaded videos, this process will be done just after users upload videos. If getid3 is installed correctly, Seyret will determine duration for uploaded videos and extract six thumbnails for your video. Users will be able to select one of these thumbnails to be used as default.

getID3 Installation

Download getID3 package from http://getid3.sourceforge.net/ . Extract it. Copy all files under seyretfiles/tools directory for 0.2.7.7 and 0.2.7.8. On 0.2.7.9, there is an automatic package installation system for pro users. You can install getID3 package from Seyret administration panel with one click. Non pro users will copy extracted files under seyretfiles/tools/getid3 directory.

SEF Configuration

Seyret internal links are all coded with sef support. When you Joomla core sef or any third party sef extensions you'll get search engine optimized urls. You should follow some important steps to enable seo urls.

Local configuration

If you are using Apache, you should rename htaccess.txt file to .htaccess. If you are working on your web hosting, usually it will work without problems. However if you are testing on your local computer, you may get some Server Error problems. Here is a small tutorial to use htaccess with XAMPP on your computer.

1- Open your xampp/apache/conf/httpd.conf file. Find LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so and remove # sign before that line. This will enable rewrite module which is needed for sef urls.

2- Open the httpd configuration file which you have defined your localsite alias in. Find the alias of your site and use it like following. Pay attention to use FileInfo.

Alias /mylocalsite "C:/mylocalsite/"
   <Directory "C:/mylocalsite">
       AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>

3- Open your htaccess file and add # before Options FollowSymLinks .

4- Find RewriteBase / and add your local site alias like RewriteBase /mylocalsite

5- You should restart your apache now to see the effects of these changes.

6- Go to your local Joomla admin and enable sef urls. It should work now without problems.

Artio SEF

Seyret is succesfully tested with Artio SEF 2.2.6 and Seyret SEF plugin in extensions page

If you want to localize your Seyret SEF links with Artio, you should open com_seyret.php extension file and edit language definitions manually.

Troubleshoot

Connection Problems

As Seyret harvests all information from remote video servers automatically, it needs a proper connection functionality. This means php should be able to read contents from different urls. Php has connection capabilities, but on some servers these can be disabled. There are two common ways to read remote urls via php. file_get_contents function and cURL library.

Seyret uses cURL library as default if installed.

file_get_contents

This function can read urls into a variable. It is supported on php versions newer than 4.3.0. To be able to use this function, allow_url_fopen value should be on in php configuration. If you are on a shared hosting, probably you'll not have access to php.ini file. Then contact your host provider.

cURL Library

If this library is installed on your server, Seyret will attempt to use this library as connection function. Sometimes host providers disable curl_exec function. In order to use this library, it should be enabled.

On Seyret diagnostics page, you can see status of these functions. If both are not usable, then unfortunately you'll not be able to use Seyret on that server.

Javascript Problems

Some our users face up with javascript errors on their sites. This is the most problematic issue on web programming, especially if it is a public script. Javascript is a client side language. This means, codes are read by your browser, then executed on your own computer. So, if there are some other javascript codes on your page, browser will try to execute all of them. This probably causes some conflicts on script. To avoid javascript conflicts, you should take following information into consideration.

Mootools

Seyret is heavily using Mootools library as javascript framework. On newer versions we will strict this lightweight and capable library more. Also in Joomla 1.5 series, core team decided to go on with Mootools. As a nature of Javascript coding, this library may have conflicts with others.

Problems with older versions

On Seyret we use latest version of mootools. On some other Joomla extensions, we see older mootools releases. This causes problem, bıth versions will not work on same site.

Solution: Please update older mootools files to latest release.

Problems with JQuery

Both JQuery and Mootools use same selector, $. This causes conflict.

Solution: There is no solution on Mootools side, but there is one in JQuery. Open your jquery used javascript file, add jQuery.noConflict(); in your file. Then replace $ signs with jQuery . This should your conflict problem.

If your javascript file is encoded, you can request original files from extension or theme author.

AJAX

On some sites some AJAX problems have been seen rarely. The reason may differ.

index2.php Problem

Seyret uses index2.php file for AJAX contacts. Please check index2.php file existance. If it is not readable, please give it accurate permissions.

seyrethttp Problem

If there are some other javascripts, especially ajax based, they may break seyretjavascript codes. On newer versions we will move mootools AJAX class totally.

Session Ownership

On linux servers, file ownership is determined upon file creation. It is determined by the user that owns the operating system process that creates the file in the filesystem. As default apache has a different session username than ftp account, usually nobody or apache. If you upload a file via FTP, the owner of that file will be user. If a file is generated in php, the owner of that file will be nobody or apache.

As a security reason, system will control write permissions with file ownerships. If the owner of session is different than file owner, this will result write failure with 755 permissions.

The best and most secured way to override this problem is using suphp or phpsuexec on the server. These are server side programs that are installed by host providers. If your host provider doesn't install these scripts, there are some ways to use Seyret without problems.

1- seyretfiles folder tree problem