Instruction Manual

[bplex]

1) <List Per Page> - What does this do? (What page, what list)?

This tells vShare how many videos to list per page on your site. Once you reach that limit, you have to scroll to the next page.

2) <Guest Limit> - why is this set to 20000000000? (Does this indicate how many people can be online at one time?)

This tells vShare how many seconds of video can be watched before requiring the visitor to register for an account. Setting it to a high number pretty much means that a user will never be prompted to signup for an account. Setting this to a low number will prompt a user to signup more quickly.

3) <Service Type> - Can this be set for specific areas of the site or does it affect the whole site in general?

This tells vShare what type of site you are running (free or paid). Currently, it is site specific. I have built modules, however, than can make this section specific.

4) <Debug Mode> - What does this do?

Turning this on causes vShare to output a debug file in the templates_c directory. This is useful for troubleshooting video conversion problems.

1) <Signup Captcha> - What is this?

This turns on a randomly generated image that is displayed to the user at signup. This image must be correctly entered into the form before a user is permitted to signup. This is used to aid in the prevention of automated signups.

1) <Video Processing> - Batch, Real Time, Background - Does this affect user or admin uploads or both. How does it work?

This affects both user and admin uploads. Batch mode relies on the cron job that gets created. Videos that are uploaded to the system between the cron jobs are converted whenever the cron job takes place. Real Time converts the video as soon as it is uploaded. Background does the same thing as real time with the exception that the conversion takes place as a background process. In Real Time mode, a user who uploads a video has to wait until the video is converted before they can proceed further into the site. In background mode, once the video is uploaded, the conversion process is started as a background process and the user is free to continue using the site.

2) <Create Thumbnail with> - ffmpeg-php, mplayer, ffmpeg, what is the difference?

In terms of how vShare creates thumbnails, there is no difference. The reason for the choice is that, depending on the host, some features are not available to all users (for example, a webhost may prevent people from using ffmpeg but they are allowed to use mplayer). So, you are able to choose whichever program you have installed. For 99.9% of people, you can choose whichever as you likely have them all installed.

3) <Flvtool> - What does this do?

This program inserts metadata into your FLV files. 99% of all vShare installations will never use the metadata that is injected. For those of us who use streaming servers such as Lighttpd, however, this metadata is needed so that the streaming server can calculate where each key frame is at. By knowing this information, streaming servers can fast forward or rewind video as it is playing (versus having to download the entire video to your computer first before being able to skip ahead).

4) <WYSIWYG Editor> what is this?

WYSIWYG (known as "What You See is What You Get") editors are web editors that create (in HTML) exactly what you are seeing on the screen. It's basically like a Microsoft Word editor in which the final outcome is a web page that looks exactly like what you are seeing. These editors are useful to people who do not know HTML.