qt-faststart Print

qt-faststart

By default, mp4 and mov movies that are created in ffmpeg aren't suitable for embedding in a browser window.  The reason for this is that ffmpeg creates the file with a crucial component placed at the very end of the file.  This means, by default, mov/mp4 files created with ffmpeg require the files to be fully downloaded before they will play in a flash / quicktime player.

qt-faststart is a command that is run by our transcoder after ffmpeg has completed.  This moves the crucial part of the movie file from the end of the file towards the beginning.  This way, the movie can be progressively downloaded while a viewer watches it.

For Elevated X users that aren't using the transcoder, or had qt-faststart turned off, it's possible to run a batch command via shell that will go through your content folder and run qt-faststart on every file, as needed.

Here is the Bash source for this script:

ext=mp4 

path=/path/to/your/members/content/upload/ 
for i in `find "$path" -iname "*.$ext"` 
do 
  qt-faststart "$i" ~/out.$ext 2>&1 > /dev/null 
  if [ -f out.$ext ] 
    then 
      echo "processing: $i"; 
      mv -f out.$ext "$i"; 
    else 
      echo "skipping: $i"; 
  fi; 
done;