Which server-side video encoding solutions are suitable for you, FFMpeg, MEncoder or VEE(1)?

If you’ve ever wanted to create a streaming video site or add a video to server side, then you must have heard of FFMpeg and MEncoder. They are both famous open source projects and easy to get. Anyone can get these scripts at zero cost. However, some webmasters don’t want to be tied to a GPL or LGPL. So they try to find other server-side encoding solutions.

These solutions are called as FFMpeg MEncoder alternatives or adobe flash media server alternatives, and most of these alternatives are commercial projects. I used to join in a video site creation work and have made lots of preparation work. Except for the known FFMpeg and MEncoder, I also searched some commercial projects and YouTube clones. For me, my budget is limited, so I choose affordable top one rank product in Google (the search term is “server-side video converter”). This commercial project is Sothink video encoder engine from SourceTec software. For the request of some friends, I process the experience into an article and make some comparisons of these three projects, which helps those people who want to create streaming video sites or add videos to server side choose the appropriate projects.

Concepts of FFMpeg, MEncoder and VEE


What is FFMpeg?
FFMpeg, one of the prior adobe flash media server alternatives, is a free open source project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFMpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the FFMpeg command line program for transcoding multimedia files. FFMpeg is published under the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1+ or GNU General Public License 2+ (depending on which options are enabled). And now it has been ported for nearly all operating systems, including Linux, cygwin, Windows, and Mac OS X, some versions even have a GUI.

What is MEncoder?
MEncoder is a free command line video decoding, encoding and filtering tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is considered the most popular free adobe flash media server alternative. It is a close sibling to MPlayer and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using different codecs.

What is VEE?
VEE, the full name is Sothink Video Encoder Engine developed by SourceTec software, one of the FFMpeg MEncoder alternative projects. It is an easy server-side video uploading, encoding, and publishing solution, and helps anyone who would like to add video sharing feature into their website or create streaming video site from scratch like YouTube. It is not the free open source, but offers you video encoder program, demo site, PHP/ASP/ASP.NET full script, document guides, SDK and life-time support.

Differences among those Projects


MEncoder, FFmpeg and VEE (Sothink Video Encoder Engine) are all command-line tools to convert one video file format to another and installed on your Windows servers. But VEE is much more different, because it is not only command-line streaming video site creation tool, but also provides the whole video sites creation solution with demo site, source code, manuals, parameter SDK included. This solution which is provided by SourceTec Software (www.sothinkmedia.com) has been successfully installed and run on over 300 Websites.

Both MEncoder and FFMpeg are developed as adobe flash media server alternatives by worldwide programmers as a part time job. Sharing the same library and upgrade fast, these two free open source applications always keep strong and advanced. However, those two powerful video encoding script are quite complicated, due to a wide range of parameters and lack of tutorials to help users, especially hard to the entry-level programmers and webmaster to start. Since there is no demo site or continuous technique support, the beginners have to complete the whole environment configuration, video encoding, Website building and more, all by themselves. It is the key point to limit the popularity and usage of both flash media server alternative projects.

The most attractive feature of MEncoder and FFMpeg is that they are open sources, can be used freely by anyone and developers, while the shortcomings are also obvious as said above. However, as the most competitive FFMpeg MEncoder alternative and adobe flash media server alternative, Sothink Video Encoder Engine, it comes with Windows version which supports the most popular environment, like Windows 2008/2003/2000 Server. It is $689 (USD) for sale, one-time payment including the fee for server-side video converter program, the player license, and also the full source code, SDK and manuals, but free installation guide and life-time technical support.

Is HTML 5 Ready?
Another big difference is that only Sothink Video Encoder Engine supports converting videos on server side to MP4/F4V format, encoded by H.264/AVC, with HTML 5 video tag supported and HTML 5 video player offered. Therefore, all videos converted by this FFMpeg MEncoder alternative can be compatible with the most popular browsers, and the most importantly, compatible with hot portable devices like Apple iPod, iPad, iPhone and Andorid Phones. View the follow chart.

Since the detailed needs for creating streaming video site are changed all the time, more webmasters are searching for other FFMpeg MEncoder alternatives since MEncoder or FFmpeg never offers ready-made solution for newly video sharing needs, like iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch compatibility.
As the number of people who surf the net with iPad and mobiles increases rapidly, video sharing sites needs to keep magnetic by Apple iOS and HTML 5 support. The new upgraded Sothink Video Encoder Engine just can batch convert all popular formats of video into iPad/iPhone/iPod MP4, H.264/AVC HD MP4, F4V and common web video format FLV.

Through the pre-set encoding profiles, webmasters needn’t worry about their video content’s compatibility with Apple iOS, Android, or any popular devices. And the JWPlayer used in Sothink video sharing solution makes the videos viewable via “video” tab on HTML 5 supported platform. Combining the effective video encoder, powerful video editing functions and full source code assistant, Sothink Video Encoder Engine releases all users from the most different and crucial script part and make everyone can create streaming video site like YouTube.

As shown in Tab.1, FFMpeg and MEncoder are equipped with most of functions. If you are acquainted with video streaming technologies or want to save budget, these two projects are your best choices.

If you have the correct mplayer/MEncoder binary, you will get support for many more codecs than the FFMpeg supports. Maybe this is one of reasons that MEncoder are more wildly used. However, if you are not satisfied with these functions of these projects, you can choose commercial FFMpeg MEncoder alternatives.

You can realize much more differences among these adobe flash media server alternatives in the part two article.