Extension:TimedMediaHandler

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, Brion Vibber, Derk-Jan Hartman
Latest version	0.6.0 (2018-11-07)
Compatibility policy	release branches
MediaWiki	1.29+
PHP	5.6+
Database changes	Yes
Tables	transcode
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history code review
Parameters $wgMediaAudioTypes $wgMediaVideoTypes $wgWaitTimeForTranscodeReset $wgEnableNiceBackgroundTranscodeJobs $wgTmhEnableMp4Uploads $wgUseFFmpeg2 $wgEnableTranscode $wgTmhSoundfontLocation $wgTmhWebPlayer $wgTmhPriorityResolutionThreshold $wgFFmpegVP9RowMT $wgEnableIframeEmbed $wgOggThumbLocation $wgParserTestMediaHandlers $wgTranscodeBackgroundSizeLimit $wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit $wgTmhFluidsynthLocation $wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces $wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet $wgTmhFileExtensions $wgEnabledTranscodeSet $wgTmhUseBetaFeatures $wgMinimumVideoPlayerSize $wgFFmpegThreads $wgMwEmbedModuleConfig $wgTranscodeBackgroundMemoryLimit $wgEnableLocalTimedText $wgFFmpegLocation $wgTmhPriorityLengthThreshold $wgTimedTextNS $wgTranscodeBackgroundPriority
Added rights transcode-reset transcode-status
Hooks used ArticleContentOnDiff ArticleFromTitle ArticlePurge BeforePageDisplay CanonicalNamespaces FileDeleteComplete FileUpload GetBetaFeaturePreferences ImageOpenShowImageInlineBefore ImagePageAfterImageLinks ImagePageFileHistoryLine LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates MediaWikiPerformAction PageRenderingHash ParserTestGlobals ParserTestTables RejectParserCacheValue ResourceLoaderGetConfigVars RevisionFromEditComplete SkinTemplateNavigation TitleMove wgQueryPages
Translate the TimedMediaHandler extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Check usage and version matrix.
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 Kaltura HTML5 Player and an experimental VideoJS Player. There is support for subtitles and captions (aka Timed Text) and 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 jobQueue system for scheduling transcoding jobs.

Feature overview

See Commons:Commons:Timed Text page.

Syntax synopsis

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

[[File:Video.ogv|File:Video.ogv]]

Display a video at its nominal size. Displays a still image from the midpoint with a play button to start an embedded player.

[[File:Audio.oga|File:Audio.oga]]

Show a placeholder for a sound file, with a play button to start an embedded player.

[[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.

[[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.

Deprecated

The syntax words noicon and noplayer are deprecated and do not function. The keyword disablecontrols will likely be deprecated. (See Task 135537) It takes a comma-separated list of any of the following values: options, timedText, fullscreen

Client support

Play media

Example video player

Example audio player

Wider audio player, showing progress bar

The player works on most modern browsers and supports IE9 and later (The modern browsers as described in MediaWiki's support matrix). Mobile support is spotty, especially on iOS.

As of August 2015, 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

You will want a recent version of ffmpeg in order to support encoding to WebM ( with the latest version of VP8). j^ supplies up-to-date static builds of ffmpeg with WebM support for major OSs at firefogg.org/nightly/. See the sections below for installation instructions on older versions of MediaWiki.

• Download and place the file(s) in a directory called TimedMediaHandler in your extensions/ folder.

• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php:

  // MediaWiki 1.31 and later
  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.
• This extension requires Composer to install PHP dependencies. Go to the extension directory and run composer install --no-dev.
• 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 manually add video file types.

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 like e.g.

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

Comparison of Wikipedia media encoding options

See Extension:TimedMediaHandler/VP9 transition for deployment details on planned Wikimedia update from VP8 to VP9.

Sorted by bandwidth tier (grayed items are not currently enabled):

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

This section is out of date -- please update me

Here are some configuration variables which may be useful:

// The minimum size for an embed 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;

// The total amout 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 = array( 'commonswiki' => 102 );
$wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces = array();

/**
* 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 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 = [
    'vorbis' => true,
    'mp3' => true,
];

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

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

Because transcode jobs are resource intensive they will not run as part of normal job queue ( see bug 29336 ) Instead they must be requested by the --type argument:

php maintenance/runJobs.php --type webVideoTranscode

If running this command causes it to hang forever, you may need to set $wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit = 0; in LocalSettings.php. See task T206957.

Encoding nodes

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

Minimal install under Debian and Ubuntu

apt install ffmpeg

Plus, add this to your LocalSettings.php (tested for Devuan ASCII only):

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

On older versions of MediaWiki (1.29–1.31)

• Version 1.31 was breaking for system administrators. The extension now requires wfLoadExtension, dropped the dependency for the MwEmbedSupport extension, and the WebVideoTranscode PHP constants are now expressed as string values instead.
• Note that, although MwEmbedSupport was included in TimedMediaHandler for MediaWiki 1.31 and later, for MediaWiki versions prior to that you will need to download it from the archive page.

In LocalSettings.php, load the extension with:

// MediaWiki 1.27 - 1.30
wfLoadExtension( 'MwEmbedSupport' );
require_once "$IP/extensions/TimedMediaHandler/TimedMediaHandler.php";

// TimedMediaHandler depended on MwEmbedSupport until 1.30
// MediaWiki 1.27 and earlier
require_once "$IP/extensions/MwEmbedSupport/MwEmbedSupport.php";
require_once "$IP/extensions/TimedMediaHandler/TimedMediaHandler.php";

Prior to 1.31, $wgEnabledTranscodeSet is set with:

// Before 1.31
$wgEnabledTranscodeSet = [
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_160P,
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_240P,
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_360P,
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_480P,
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_720P,
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_1080P
];

$wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet = [
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_OGG_VORBIS,
    WebVideoTranscode::ENC_MP3,
];

Troubleshooting

This section needs expansion

"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 above.