MediaWiki

Extension:TimedMediaHandler

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MediaWiki extensions manual
TimedMediaHandler
Release status: stable
Implementation Media, API
Description Provides integrated support for server-side transcoding, WebM, Ogg Theora, Vorbis, MP3, Speex, and Timed Text
Author(s) Michael Dale, Jan Gerber, Tim Starling, James Heinrich, Brooke Vibber, Derk-Jan Hartman
Latest version 0.6.0
Compatibility policy Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki >= 1.43
Database changes Yes
Tables transcode
License GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download
Download extension
Git [?]:
Parameters
  • $wgMediaAudioTypes
  • $wgMediaVideoTypes
  • $wgWaitTimeForTranscodeReset
  • $wgTmhEnableMp4Uploads
  • $wgUseFFmpeg2
  • $wgEnableTranscode
  • $wgTranscodeSoftSizeLimit
  • $wgTmhPriorityResolutionThreshold
  • $wgFFmpegVP9RowMT
  • $wgEnableIframeEmbed
  • $wgParserTestMediaHandlers
  • $wgTranscodeBackgroundSizeLimit
  • $wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit
  • $wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet
  • $wgTmhSoundfontLocation
  • $wgEnabledTranscodeSet
  • $wgMinimumVideoPlayerSize
  • $wgFFmpegThreads
  • $wgTmhFluidsynthLocation
  • $wgTranscodeBackgroundMemoryLimit
  • $wgTmhFileExtensions
  • $wgFFmpegLocation
  • $wgTmhPriorityLengthThreshold
  • $wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces
  • $wgTimedTextNS
Added rights
  • transcode-reset
  • transcode-status
Hooks used
Quarterly downloads 177 (Ranked 34th)
Public wikis using 1,290 (Ranked 218th)
Translate the TimedMediaHandler extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues Open tasks · Report a bug

The TimedMediaHandler extension allows you to display audio and video files in wiki pages, using the same syntax as for image files. It includes the VideoJS Player. It has support for subtitles and captions (aka Timed Text), real-time stream switching between multiple WebM and other derivatives, and many other features. TMH server-side support includes options for uploading HTML5 audio and video, multiple transcode profiles to deliver content, playback of MIDI files, metadata parsing for Ogg and WebM videos, and integration with MediaWiki's job queue system for scheduling transcoding jobs.

For new and upcoming developments in 2022 and beyond, see Extension:TimedMediaHandler/2022 work.

Feature overview

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For the player see: VideoJS Player.

For features of the subtitling system, see Commons:Timed Text page.

Syntax synopsis

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In addition to the image embed syntax, Timed Media Handler supports:

[[File:Video.ogv]]
Display a video at its nominal size. Displays a still image from the midpoint with a play button to start a pop-up video player.
[[File:Audio.oga]]
Show a placeholder for a sound file with a play button. The player will appear inline or as a pop-up if the audio file has closed captioning/subtitles.
[[File:Midi.mid]]
Generate digital audio from the music instructions in the MIDI file and show the embedded audio player to play this audio.
[[File:Video.ogv|thumb]]
Show a video in a floating thumbnail box <gallery>File:Video.ogv</gallery>
Show a video embedded in an image gallery (each clip will popup a dialog for the full player)
[[File:Video.ogg|thumbtime=1:25]]
Use a frame from 1 minute 25 seconds into the video as the placeholder image. A single number is taken as an offset in seconds. One can also use HH:MM:SS, e.g., 1:02:22 will be 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 22 seconds into the video. Floating-point seconds are supported (but broken on Wikimedia wikis: phab:T228467).
[[File:Video.ogg|start=1:25]]
Temporal media fragments displays a video clip starting at 1 minute 25 seconds into the video. A single number is taken as an offset in seconds. You can also include an end time of the form end=1:30 which would result in a clip of 5 seconds playing from 1:25 to 1:30. If thumbtime is not provided, the start time will be used for the displayed thumbnail. One can also use HH:MM:SS, e.g. 1:02:22 will be 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 22 seconds into the video.
start= and end= can also be used as query parameters in the URL for a video's file page.
[[File:Video.ogg|muted]]
Start the media with muted audio. (introduced in 1.39)
[[File:Video.ogg|loop]]
Loop the video continuously. (introduced in 1.39)
Deprecated
The syntax words noicon and noplayer are deprecated and do not function. The keyword disablecontrols will likely be deprecated. (See task T135537) It takes a comma-separated list of any of the following values: options, timedText, fullscreen


Client support

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Example video player
Example audio player

[[File:Videoonwikipedia.ogv|300px|thumb|...]]
[[File:example.ogg|thumb|...]]
[[File:example.ogg|30px]]
[[File:example.ogg]]

The player works on most modern browsers (see MediaWiki's support matrix). Mobile support is spotty, especially on iOS.

TimedMediaHandler includes a JavaScript compatibility shim for Ogg audio/video that works in Safari, Internet Explorer 10/11, and Microsoft Edge browsers.

Third-party users of MediaWiki may also wish to manually enable MP4 H.264/AAC support for native video and audio playback in Safari/IE/Edge, but when using these formats, you may need a patent license from MPEG-LA for internet broadcasting.

Installation

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You will want a recent version of ffmpeg in order to support encoding to WebM (with the latest version of VP9).

  • Download and move the extracted TimedMediaHandler folder to your extensions/ directory.
    Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
    git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/TimedMediaHandler
  • Only when installing from Git, run Composer to install PHP dependencies, by issuing composer install --no-dev in the extension directory. (See task T173141 for potential complications.)
  • Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file: 
    wfLoadExtension( 'TimedMediaHandler' );
$wgFFmpegLocation = '/usr/bin/ffmpeg'; // Most common ffmpeg path on Linux
  • Run the update script which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.
  • Configure as required.
  • You may need to increase the allowed memory in $wgMaxShellMemory .
  •   Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

The extension will automatically add supported file types (except for mp4) to $wgFileExtensions , so you do not need to add video file types manually.

After downloading this extension, please note that it requires Composer .

So, after installation change to the directory containing the extension e.g., "../extensions/TimedMediaHandler/" and run composer install --no-dev, or when updating: composer update --no-dev.

Alternatively, as well as preferably, add the line "extensions/TimedMediaHandler/composer.json" to the "composer.local.json" file in the root directory of your wiki e.g. 

{
	"extra": {
		"merge-plugin": {
			"include": [
				"extensions/TimedMediaHandler/composer.json"
			]
		}
	}
}

Comparison of Wikipedia media encoding options

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As of 2018, Wikimedia sites use VP9.

Sorted by bandwidth tier:

Bitrate Mbit/s WebM VP8 WebM VP9
Super Low 0.08 160p
Very Low 0.16 160p 240p
Low 0.25 240p 360p
Moderate 0.5 360p 480p
Medium 1.0 480p 720p
High 2.0 720p 1080p
Very high 4.0 1080p 1440p
Super high 8.0 2160p

Detailed options:

Name 160P 240P 360P 480P 720P 1080P 160P 240P 360P 480P 720P 1080P 1440P 2160P
Container WebM
Video Encoding VP8 VP9
Max width (pixels) 288 426 640 854 1280 1920 288 426 640 854 1280 1920 2560 4096
Max height (pixels) 160 240 360 480 720 1080 160 240 360 480 720 1080 1440 2160
Bitrate (Mbit/s) 0.16 0.25 0.5 1.0 2.0 4.0 0.08 0.16 0.25 0.5 1.0 2.0 4.0 8.0
Audio Encoding Vorbis Opus
Channels 2 (stereo) (pass-through)
Sampling rate (Hz) 44100 48000
Quality - 1 2 3 - (default)

Configuration

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This section is out of date -- please update me

Here are some configuration variables that may be useful: 

// The minimum size for an embedded video player (smaller than this size uses a pop-up player).
$wgMinimumVideoPlayerSize = 200;

// If transcoding is enabled for this wiki (if disabled, no transcode jobs are added, and no transcode status is displayed).
// Note: if remote embedding an asset, we will still check if the remote repo has transcoding enabled and associated flavors
// for that media embed.
$wgEnableTranscode = true;

// Exclude transcoding jobs from the default job runner because they take very long to complete
$wgJobTypesExcludedFromDefaultQueue[] = 'webVideoTranscode';
$wgJobTypesExcludedFromDefaultQueue[] = 'webVideoTranscodePrioritized';

// The total amount of time a transcoding shell command can take:
$wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit = 3600 * 8;
// Maximum amount of virtual memory available to transcoding processes in KB
$wgTranscodeBackgroundMemoryLimit = 2 * 1024 * 1024; // 2GB avconv, ffmpeg2theora mmap resources so virtual memory needs to be high enough
// Maximum file size transcoding processes can create, in KB
$wgTranscodeBackgroundSizeLimit = 3 * 1024 * 1024; // 3GB

// Number of threads to use in avconv for transcoding
$wgFFmpegThreads = 1;

// The NS for TimedText (registered on MediaWiki.org)
// https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_namespace_registration
// Note commons pre-dates TimedMediaHandler and should set $wgTimedTextNS = 102 in LocalSettings.php
$wgTimedTextNS = 710;

// Set TimedText namespace for ForeignDBViaLBRepo on a per wikiID basis
// $wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces = [ 'commonswiki' => 102 ];
$wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces = [];

/**
* Default enabled transcodes
*
* -If set to empty array, no derivatives will be created
* -Derivative keys encode settings are defined in WebVideoTranscode.php
*
* -These transcodes are *in addition to* the source file.
* -Only derivatives with a smaller width than the source asset size will be created
* -Regardless of source size, at least one WebM and Ogg source will be created from the $wgEnabledTranscodeSet
* -Derivative jobs are added to the MediaWiki JobQueue the first time the asset is uploaded
* -Derivative should be listed min to max
*/
// Starting from 1.31
// All valid string values are listed in the extension's extension.json file 
$wgEnabledTranscodeSet = [
    '160p.webm' => true,
    '240p.webm' => true,
    '360p.webm' => true,
    '480p.webm' => true,
    '720p.webm' => true,
    '1080p.webm' => true,
];

$wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet = [
	'ogg' => true,   // ogg+vorbis
	'opus' => false, // ogg+opus
	'mp3' => true,   // raw mp3
	'm4a' => false,  // mp4+aac (mp4a.40.5)
];

// If mp3 source assets can be ingested:
$wgTmhEnableMp3Uploads = true;

// If mp4 source assets can be ingested:
$wgTmhEnableMp4Uploads = false;

// If you use ffmpeg 2, it can be set to true
$wgUseFFmpeg2 = false;

For transcoding, make sure you have $wgMaxShellMemory, $wgMaxShellTime, $wgMaxShellFileSize are large enough to allow encoding jobs to run and save output. Default values are most likely too low.

Running transcode jobs

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Because transcode jobs are resource intensive, they should not run as part of the normal job queue (see task T29336). Configure Localsettings.php with: 

$wgJobTypesExcludedFromDefaultQueue[] = 'webVideoTranscode';
$wgJobTypesExcludedFromDefaultQueue[] = 'webVideoTranscodePrioritized';

Setup dedicated jobrunners and request running the jobs by the --type argument: 

php ./maintenance/run.php runJobs --type webVideoTranscode
php ./maintenance/run.php runJobs --type webVideoTranscodePrioritized

It is very important to run these tasks as the webserver user.

A single transcode job for a video can easily take an hour or longer, so ensure the commands have enough time and CPU to run.

Encoding nodes

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To transcode many videos, you might want to run multiple encoding nodes that connect to the master database and access your file store directly. You will need to install ffmpeg.

Minimal install under Debian and Ubuntu

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apt install ffmpeg

Plus, add this to your LocalSettings.php (tested for Devuan ASCII (Archived 2018-09-23 at the Wayback Machine) only): 

$wgFFmpegLocation = '/usr/bin/ffmpeg';

Troubleshooting

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This section needs expansion

Please note that versions of TimedMediaHandler before MediaWiki 1.38 did not work with PostgreSQL. See task T157424.

ffmpeg – failed to map segment from shared object
You need to increase the allowed memory in $wgMaxShellMemory .
Class 'getID3' not found
You need to install the extension's PHP dependencies using Composer; see the installation section.
Unrecognized option 'max_muxing_queue_size'
You may be using ffmpeg 2. You need add $wgUseFFmpeg2 = true; to your LocalSettings.php.
Unrecognized option 'max_muxing_queue_size'
You may be using ffmpeg 2. You need add $wgUseFFmpeg2 = true; to your LocalSettings.php.
[exception] […] /index.php?title=Special:Upload Error: Call to undefined method FSFile::getLocalRefPath()
This extension is incompatible with Extension:EmbedVideo . Uninstall it. You may also need to make sure you did the composer steps properly.

See also

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Retrieved from "https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:TimedMediaHandler&oldid=6688858"