Extension:TimedMediaHandler

MediaWiki extensions manual

File:OOjs UI icon advanced-invert.svg TimedMediaHandler Release status: stable
File:Screenshot of TimedMediaHandler using VideoJS with Big Buck Bunny.png
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, Brooke Vibber, Derk-Jan Hartman
Latest version	0.6.0
Compatibility policy	Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki	>= 1.42
Database changes	Yes
Tables	transcode
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	<translate> Download extension</translate> <translate> Git</translate> [?]: <translate> Download Git master</translate> <translate> browse repository</translate> (Phabricator · GitHub) <translate> commit history</translate> <translate> repository contributors (GitHub)</translate> <translate> code review</translate>
Parameters $wgMediaAudioTypes $wgMediaVideoTypes $wgWaitTimeForTranscodeReset $wgTmhEnableMp4Uploads $wgUseFFmpeg2 $wgEnableTranscode $wgTranscodeSoftSizeLimit $wgTmhPriorityResolutionThreshold $wgFFmpegVP9RowMT $wgEnableIframeEmbed $wgParserTestMediaHandlers $wgTranscodeBackgroundSizeLimit $wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit $wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet $wgTmhSoundfontLocation $wgEnabledTranscodeSet $wgMinimumVideoPlayerSize $wgFFmpegThreads $wgTmhFluidsynthLocation $wgTranscodeBackgroundMemoryLimit $wgTmhFileExtensions $wgFFmpegLocation $wgTmhPriorityLengthThreshold $wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces $wgTimedTextNS
Added rights transcode-reset transcode-status
Hooks used ArticleContentOnDiff ArticleFromTitle ArticlePurge BeforePageDisplay CanonicalNamespaces FileDeleteComplete FileUndeleteComplete FileUpload ImageOpenShowImageInlineBefore ImagePageAfterImageLinks ImagePageFileHistoryLine LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates MediaWikiPerformAction PageDeleteComplete PageMoveComplete PageSaveComplete ParserTestGlobals RevisionFromEditComplete SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal Universal extensions TitleMove wgQueryPages
Quarterly downloads
Public wikis using
Translate the TimedMediaHandler extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
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 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 job queue system for scheduling transcoding jobs.

For new and upcoming developments in 2022 and beyond, see Extension:TimedMediaHandler/2022 work.

Please note that TimedMediaHandler does not currently work with PostgreSQL. See <translate> task <tvar name=1>T157424</tvar></translate>.

Feature overview

For the player see: VideoJS Player.

For features of the subtitling system, see Commons:Timed Text page.

Syntax synopsis

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

[[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]]

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. Floating-point seconds are supported (but broken on Wikimedia wikis: phab:T228467).

[[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.

start= and end= can also be used as query parameters in the URL for a video's file page.

[[File:Video.ogg|muted]]

Start the media with muted audio. <translate> (introduced in <tvar

[[File:Video.ogg|loop]]

Loop the video continuously. <translate> (introduced in <tvar

Deprecated

The syntax words noicon and noplayer are deprecated and do not function. The keyword disablecontrols will likely be deprecated. (See <translate> task <tvar name=1>T135537</tvar></translate>) It takes a comma-separated list of any of the following values: options, timedText, fullscreen

Client support

File:Videoonwikipedia.ogv

Example video player

File:example.ogg

Example audio player

[[File:Videoonwikipedia.ogv|300px|thumb|...]]
[[File:example.ogg|thumb|...]]
[[File:example.ogg|30px]]
[[File:example.ogg]]

The player works on most modern browsers (see MediaWiki's support matrix). Mobile support is spotty, especially on iOS.

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 VP9).

• <translate> [[<tvar name=2>Special:ExtensionDistributor/TimedMediaHandler</tvar>|Download]] and move the extracted <tvar name=name>TimedMediaHandler</tvar> folder to your <tvar name=ext>extensions/</tvar> directory.</translate>
  <translate> Developers and code contributors should install the extension [[<tvar name=git>Special:MyLanguage/Download from Git</tvar>|from Git]] instead, using:</translate>cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/TimedMediaHandler
• <translate> Only when installing from Git, run <tvar name=composer>Composer</tvar> to install PHP dependencies, by issuing <tvar name=code>composer install --no-dev</tvar> in the extension directory.</translate> <translate> (See <tvar name=phab><translate> task <tvar name=1>T173141</tvar></translate></tvar> for potential complications.)</translate>
• <translate> Add the following code at the bottom of your <tvar name=1>LocalSettings.php </tvar> file:</translate>

  wfLoadExtension( 'TimedMediaHandler' );
  $wgFFmpegLocation = '/usr/bin/ffmpeg'; // Most common ffmpeg path on Linux
  

• <translate> Run the [[<tvar name=update>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Update.php</tvar>|update script]] which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.</translate>
• Configure as required.
• You may need to increase the allowed memory in $wgMaxShellMemory .
• File:OOjs UI icon check-constructive.svg <translate> Done</translate> – <translate> Navigate to <tvar name=special>Special:Version</tvar> on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.</translate>

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

As of 2018, Wikimedia sites use VP9.

Sorted by bandwidth tier:

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 = [ 'commonswiki' => 102 ];
$wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces = [];

/**
* 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 = [
	'ogg' => true,   // ogg+vorbis
	'opus' => false, // ogg+opus
	'mp3' => true,   // raw mp3
	'm4a' => false,  // mp4+aac (mp4a.40.5)
];

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

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

// If you use ffmpeg 2 can be set it to true
$wgUseFFmpeg2 = 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 <translate> task <tvar name=1>T29336</tvar></translate>) 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 <translate> task <tvar name=1>T206957</tvar></translate>.

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 (Archived 2018-09-23 at the Wayback Machine) only):

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

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.

Unrecognized option 'max_muxing_queue_size'

You may be using ffmpeg 2. You need add $wgUseFFmpeg2 = true; to your LocalSettings.php.

Unrecognized option 'max_muxing_queue_size'

You may be using ffmpeg 2. You need add $wgUseFFmpeg2 = true; to your LocalSettings.php.

[exception] […] /index.php?title=Special:Upload Error: Call to undefined method FSFile::getLocalRefPath()

This extension is incompatible with Extension:EmbedVideo . Uninstall it. You may also need to make sure you did the composer steps properly.