Videos

I can't help but wonder about the infrastructure needed to support all of the video portions of Dolphin. This includes the video uploads, video comments, and video chats.

This must take plenty of hardware, space, processing power, and high bandwidth. Is Boonex equipped to carry this load if and when any of its members become utterly successful and start using lots of videos?

I might be wrong, but I suppose some service like YouTube.com requires millions of dollars to continue their operation. I imagine Boonex would need to do the same to support those Dolphin installations who will be relying on Boonex for storing and serving video files.

Does anyone know if Boonex is properly planning and equipping to handle all this? Thank you in advance for your info.

Boonex does neither host any of these applications nor are there any files stored remotely from an installation to a server that boonex is affiliated with. Boonex gets their server from HFW (recall the time they were CUT off supposedly by accident). so i dont think you fully understand the dynamics of the dolphin application.

Regards,
DosDawg

Dosdawg - I think he is saying that he doesn't fully understand the infrastructure requirements - neither do I or most users for that matter.   Most people (myself included) don't really know much about processing and bandwidth requirements -  should our sites grow and become more successful.  What I really think people need to know are the "options" for each stage of development - when is it ok to use a shared server, and at what point does it become impractical.  When should you move to dedicated or VPS - and what should you pay, etc.   I realize you represent a hosting service but these aren't easy questions for most people.

-

Rob

Thank you DosDawg for clearing some things out for me.

Thank you Caltrade for helping to clarify my question.

After giving it a little bit more thought, my question is whether Boonex provides any type of media server hosting. Does Boonex provide any type of hosting?

Since I am not wholly familiar with what Boonex is doing, I wonder how Boonex is accomplishing the video recording facility. Where is the video "streamed" to when a user is recording the video?

I previously wrote a Flex application (Flash interface) that tapped into a user's microphone to record a message. The message was streamed and stored to a media server at http://www.influxis.com. Whenever the user needed to edit or retrieved the message, it was served from the same media server. My actual Flex application was hosted at another server that did not provide me with what influxis could provide me.

So I wonder if Boonex is anywhere in the mix for either audio or video files. I understand a third party would host my Dolphin installation. What if this third party does not have the capacity to host the audio or video files? Does the admin panel allow me to specify my media server host?

I hope this makes sense. Thanks in advance!

As I understand it, you can specifify an external RMS server Dolphin for your Ray applications, but the one at Boonex doesn't work, and no mere mortal has ever been able to install a functioning RMS server.

That's not true Caltrade... Sammie has one... I have one...  A few others have them... We really are mere mortals... In fact, I stubbed my toe yesterday and screamed out in pain... Very debilitating actually... :))

Me too, we install RMS on all our Dolphin servers as well as one on one of our "Media" servers. And last time I looked I was still mortal...damn I think I just got a paper cut on my finger......LOL

lol forget the RMS..

Well I can't even upload a video file on the new dolphin..

I saw some members did.. but how?

after i browse for the file and click Submit (wait till upload finishes), the Info form pops out, I fill all the needed fields then hit the submit button of the info form.. then.. nothing..

I browse to see my uploaded video and i get the "EMPTY" message..

is it my fault or what?

P.S. I tried with both wmv and flv files..

What new dolphin, you dont mean the demo of 7 do you. it clearly states that its not ready in the blurb above the link for it. it's still being worked on. LOL Things will be a bit hit and miss for a while, which is why boonex havent released it yet.

Yes but some users already uploaded.. I don't get it..

Whatever.. I guess you're right :)

Lol i know what you mean, its one of those mysterys of the universe, like why does the hummingbird fly backwards and other birds cant..... Im sure boonex will sort it all before they release it.... (please God)

Thanks Caltrade.

>>external RMS server

I got it. So I do not need to rely on Boonex to host or server my video or audio files. I will need to pay someone other host to do this for me. Do you know a good RMS host, of course reasonably priced?

By the way, does Dolphin allow me to integrate videos from YouTube.com or any other free video hoster?

Thanks also to everyone else who has responded and carried on an interesting conversation. This community is really awesome.

Check with dosdawg, i believe he offers rms...

 I talke about some of this a little in this thread: http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/#topic/What-50-GB-of-RMS-total-bandwidth-will-get-you.htm

When to get a vps or dedicated server?

This depends on how many users are you expecting per day on your site at one time. Here are some baisc guidelines to follow .

If your expected users is less than 1000 per day  uploading,viewing , listening videos  and  music  ,viewing cams using voice chat then a vps with more than 1gb of ram and an estimated of 2000 - 3000 gb of bandwith should be fine.If your expected users.If your expected users are above 1000 per day then using a dedicated server would with unmetered bandwidth would make sense.

**Always read the terms about unmetered bandwidth  hosting before choosing a host.

LOL@unmetered bandwidth, for most server companies that is the biggest con trick theyve got, talk about false advertising. My hostpapa says that, and its rubbish. When you get down to the small print, what they actually mean is unlimited if you dont have much traffic, and at hostpapa it's agaisnt their TOS to have any high bandwidth application on your site (chat rooms, shout boxes) and i suspect that most servers who spout unlimited or unmetered in their blurb (unless you pay big money) really mean "unlimited if you dont use it too much". Realisticly, there's no such thing as unlimited and or unmetered, well certainly not on a shared host, so dont be fooled.

you are 100% correct on the farce of false advertising. any time a hosting provider offers or declares unlimited anything, you should immediately be aware. this was something that started back in the late 90's when about 90% of the sites being hosted were static html with some flash animation. this was offered as it was very well known that no standard static site could ever use even a portion of the bandwidth allocated or the space allocated. If you have a site that uses 5GB of space on a disk, you have a ton of files loaded. And to serve that data, this is what the bandwidth is for, and of course it has become way more affordable now than it has been in the past, but its still something that is charged for. here is the deal on this, upstream and downstream is purchased from the datacenter, regardless of which datacenter, since they do not own the pipeline, they are connected to a redundant backbone, which in fact monitors their usages. there are some way out mathematical calculations created to determine what a GB of data up or down would cost, and this is passed on to us, that utilize colocated machines or for that matter any other remote server services.

So for somebody to state unlimited, that would be like ford or chevy saying unlimited miles to the gallon. grab that one. there is nothing and i mean nothing that is unlimited, there is a limit to all things tangible, and a limit to most things intangible, the only thing that has been theorized (not proven) is that galatical space itself is infinite or unlimited if you will.

I have submitted many tickets inquiring about this advert of unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth, of course the folks answering those tickets, may not truly know, they most likely use a knowledge base, utilizing keywords from a support ticket that is submitted to compile their answers. but when you present to them that you have a content size of say 700GB and you were using 3TB upstream and 5TB downstream, they will immediately tell you that you need to have a dedicated server, and may even go further to tell you have to purchase additional bandwidth.

My point here is that i have been singing this song forever, because from a logical standpoint, unlimited is a bullshit statement.

I will state one more thing and will leave this post alone. I have noticed from multiple surveys from current and previous clients the total aspect of disk space, and how this whole unlimited thing was marketable with 80 Dolphin sites (not just default installs) we are using 35GB on a disk, i have ran out of time to go over this in any more detail, but i will be back with a summary at some point.

Unlimited is not a true statement, there is always a limit.

Regards,

DosDawg

Yes most hosting companies do false advertising about unmetered bandwidth thats why i say to check the terms.Basically if a company offering a dedicated server with  10Mbps unmetered bandwidth they would say in their terms that clients would need to pay extra charges when the bandwidth exceed 10Mbps which make sense , buy if a company doesnt say this in their terms then this company would lock down your account when the bandwidth exceed the limit. Anyway its my fault for not explaining this in my previous post :).

If you haven't already, please read houstonlively's excellent response here:

http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/#topic/What-50-GB-of-RMS-total-bandwidth-will-get-you.htm

Hey, did you ever get 7 to accept video file uploads? i have the exact same problem upon uploading them as your described before this post. It always says "error, file not processed" after looking for the video, plus the folder on the server remains empty.

What gives? It works in the demo.

Hi Lavinco,

I was getting the same error originally. Later I checked and found out that I had messed up my cron job that I had set. i corrected the cron job and now it works fine. Yes it takes a minute or two for the conversion to happen. There is another thread in the forum where this issue was discussed.

Thanks for the quick reply.

This is the cron I have set to run every hour:

cd /var/chroot/home/content/m/u/s/muskegoncom/html/periodic; /usr/local/bin/php -q cron.php

When it runs, I get an email from my server that says this:

-------

register_globals is On (warning, you should have this param in Off state, or your site will unsafe)

Warning! Dolphin cannot work without mbstring extension.
Please go to the http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/GenDolTShooter
and solve the problem.

-------

i have run a php info test to ensure that register_globals if off.

Am I missing something here?