docs/source/siteadmin/media-types.rst

   1 .. MediaGoblin Documentation
   2
   3    Written in 2011, 2012 by MediaGoblin contributors
   4
   5    To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have dedicated all
   6    copyright and related and neighboring rights to this software to
   7    the public domain worldwide. This software is distributed without
   8    any warranty.
   9
  10    You should have received a copy of the CC0 Public Domain
  11    Dedication along with this software. If not, see
  12    <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>.
  13
  14 .. _media-types-chapter:
  15
  16 ====================
  17 Media Types
  18 ====================
  19
  20 In the future, there will be all sorts of media types you can enable,
  21 but in the meanwhile there are three additional media types: video, audio
  22 and ascii art.
  23
  24 First, you should probably read ":doc:`configuration`" to make sure
  25 you know how to modify the mediagoblin config file.
  26
  27
  28 Enabling Media Types
  29 ====================
  30
  31 Media types are enabled in your mediagoblin configuration file, typically it is
  32 created by copying ``mediagoblin.ini`` to ``mediagoblin_local.ini`` and then
  33 applying your changes to ``mediagoblin_local.ini``. If you don't already have a
  34 ``mediagoblin_local.ini``, create one in the way described.
  35
  36 Most media types have additional dependencies that you will have to install.
  37 You will find descriptions on how to satisfy the requirements of each media type
  38 on this page.
  39
  40 To enable a media type, edit the ``media_types`` list in your
  41 ``mediagoblin_local.ini``. For example, if your system supported image and
  42 video media types, then the list would look like this::
  43
  44     media_types = mediagoblin.media_types.image, mediagoblin.media_types.video
  45
  46 Note that after enabling new media types, you must run dbupdate like so::
  47
  48     ./bin/gmg dbupdate
  49
  50 If you are running an active site, depending on your server
  51 configuration, you may need to stop it first (and it's certainly a
  52 good idea to restart it after the update).
  53
  54
  55 How does MediaGoblin decide which media type to use for a file?
  56 ===============================================================
  57
  58 MediaGoblin has two methods for finding the right media type for an uploaded
  59 file. One is based on the file extension of the uploaded file; every media type
  60 maintains a list of supported file extensions. The second is based on a sniffing
  61 handler, where every media type may inspect the uploaded file and tell if it
  62 will accept it.
  63
  64 The file-extension-based approach is used before the sniffing-based approach,
  65 if the file-extension-based approach finds a match, the sniffing-based approach
  66 will be skipped as it uses far more processing power.
  67
  68
  69 Video
  70 =====
  71
  72 To enable video, first install gstreamer and the python-gstreamer
  73 bindings (as well as whatever gstremaer extensions you want,
  74 good/bad/ugly).  On Debianoid systems::
  75
  76     sudo apt-get install python-gst0.10 gstreamer0.10-plugins-{base,bad,good,ugly} \
  77         gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
  78
  79
  80 Add ``mediagoblin.media_types.video`` to the ``media_types`` list in your
  81 ``mediagoblin_local.ini`` and restart MediaGoblin.
  82
  83 Run::
  84
  85     ./bin/gmg dbupdate
  86
  87 Now you should be able to submit videos, and mediagoblin should
  88 transcode them.
  89
  90 .. note::
  91
  92    You almost certainly want to separate Celery from the normal
  93    paste process or your users will probably find that their connections
  94    time out as the video transcodes.  To set that up, check out the
  95    ":doc:`production-deployments`" section of this manual.
  96
  97
  98 Audio
  99 =====
 100
 101 To enable audio, install the gstreamer and python-gstreamer bindings (as well
 102 as whatever gstreamer plugins you want, good/bad/ugly), scipy and numpy are
 103 also needed for the audio spectrograms.
 104 To install these on Debianoid systems, run::
 105
 106     sudo apt-get install python-gst0.10 gstreamer0.10-plugins-{base,bad,good,ugly} \
 107         gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg python-numpy python-scipy
 108
 109 The ``scikits.audiolab`` package you will install in the next step depends on the
 110 ``libsndfile1-dev`` package, so we should install it.
 111 On Debianoid systems, run::
 112
 113     sudo apt-get install libsndfile1-dev
 114
 115 .. note::
 116     scikits.audiolab will display a warning every time it's imported if you do
 117     not compile it with alsa support. Alsa support is not necessary for the GNU
 118     MediaGoblin application but if you do not wish the alsa warnings from
 119     audiolab you should also install ``libasound2-dev`` before installing
 120     scikits.audiolab.
 121
 122 Then install ``scikits.audiolab`` for the spectrograms::
 123
 124     ./bin/pip install scikits.audiolab
 125
 126 Add ``mediagoblin.media_types.audio`` to the ``media_types`` list in your
 127 ``mediagoblin_local.ini`` and restart MediaGoblin.
 128
 129 Run::
 130
 131     ./bin/gmg dbupdate
 132
 133 You should now be able to upload and listen to audio files!
 134
 135
 136 Ascii art
 137 =========
 138
 139 To enable ascii art support, first install the
 140 `chardet <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/chardet>`_
 141 library, which is necessary for creating thumbnails of ascii art::
 142
 143     ./bin/easy_install chardet
 144
 145
 146 Next, modify (and possibly copy over from ``mediagoblin.ini``) your
 147 ``mediagoblin_local.ini``.  In the ``[mediagoblin]`` section, add
 148 ``mediagoblin.media_types.ascii`` to the ``media_types`` list.
 149
 150 For example, if your system supported image and ascii art media types, then
 151 the list would look like this::
 152
 153     media_types = mediagoblin.media_types.image, mediagoblin.media_types.ascii
 154
 155 Run::
 156
 157     ./bin/gmg dbupdate
 158
 159 Now any .txt file you uploaded will be processed as ascii art!
 160
 161
 162 STL / 3d model support
 163 ======================
 164
 165 To enable the "STL" 3d model support plugin, first make sure you have
 166 a recentish `Blender <http://blender.org>`_ installed and available on
 167 your execution path.  This feature has been tested with Blender 2.63.
 168 It may work on some earlier versions, but that is not guaranteed (and
 169 is surely not to work prior to Blender 2.5X).
 170
 171 Add ``mediagoblin.media_types.stl`` to the ``media_types`` list in your
 172 ``mediagoblin_local.ini`` and restart MediaGoblin.
 173
 174 Run::
 175
 176     ./bin/gmg dbupdate
 177
 178 You should now be able to upload .obj and .stl files and MediaGoblin
 179 will be able to present them to your wide audience of admirers!