Lets face it, video on the web is here to stay. Video makes our user experience better and more entertaining. Flash video is the best choice to deliver all around video to our end users. I have been on a quest to produce the best flash video that is avalible using open source tools. I can easily purchase licensing for some commercially available products but the main reason that I do not is the speed of the encoding process. FFmpeg and mencoder are blazing fast and test encode are some times 3 to 4 times fast than the best commercially available solutions. There is one major problem here with these two products. There is not one command line that will encode any video to flash video perfectly. Each codec and file extension needs its own set of procedures to get the perfect flash video. I am referring to something like Qdesign audio codec in an “mov” container, this file needs to be first converted and audio track ripped before you can add that audio track to the flash encoded video. If you do not follow that procedure you are likely to get horrible audio sync issues.

What I am going to do is develop an encode class in php that will handle any file type with out the need for the developer to know the inter workings of codec and video encoding. I will release this on my blog so that I can get the appropriate feed back that is necessary.