tl;dr: Drupal is good with the Video and Flowplayer modules. Install them with drush -y en video flowplayer and just make sure you’re testing with a video file that isn’t broken!
I’m trying to create a very simple video library in Drupal. Just a single Content Type with a bunch of fields, one of which should be for uploading a video.
The Video module looks to be the first choice. It creates a field type, and sets up a system for re-encoding. Sensible.
So I install it: drush -y en video
Then set up a transcoder by installing FFmpeg and telling Drupal where to find it. Also a Preset, which groups together output details like file extension, codec, sizes, and a bunch of other details—most of which I left as given.
Probably silly, as when I try to upload an MP4 (one of these) I get: “The video conversion process has failed. You might want to submit a simpler video format like mpeg or divx avi.” So why can’t I just upload a simple mpeg and have it displayed without being re-encoded?
The video field settings have an option, “Enable auto video conversion”, which I turn off. This works: I can upload the MP4 and it’s thumbnail is displayed at a nice size and things sort of start to look like a video player… but sadly emblazoned with “No video with supported format and MIME type found.” Oh well, maybe a different player is needed (I was relying on the standard HTML5 player).
Installing the Flowplayer module helps a bit: now there’s a video player with controls and a spinning loader—but the same MIME type error as before. Switching the MP4 player to ‘FLV Flash Players’ (from ‘HTML5 Player’) is a bit great: now there is a player, and it plays the file… audio only though, no video.
I tried another video though, and all works correctly! So that’s nice.