MediaCore is a  free open source video CMS and podcast platform that you can install on your own server.   With a slick, web 2.0-ish look and  feel, the UI is well polished and the application supports all the features you would expect including browsing, search, video and  audio upload, comments and moderation, tags and more.  Not only can you upload videos, but MediaCore also supports YouTube videos as well.  For audio and video syndication, you can have unlimited  episodes with both Feedburner RSS and iTunes support.

My only real complaint  is that it is programmed  in Python (as opposed to PHP which powers WordPress and many other open source software) which may turn away less technical users and those on shared hosting accounts without Python support.  With that said, this is by far one of the best designed open source applications I have seen and a great tool to syndicate video on the web.

If you produce audio or video show for the web or need  a easy way to showcase  videos for  your company website or intranet, you should check out MediaCore today.

Learn more, view a demo and download MediaCore at: http://getmediacore.com/

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Watch this Adobe Max 2009 presentation by video encoding expert Fabio Sonnati on encoding best practices for H.264 video.  Learn the secrets of H.264 video encoding and how to leverage your encoding software to encode high quality video for the web.

You can view a PDF of the presentation slides here

Fabio’s  Flash Video Encoding Blog

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Jeroen Wijering’s JW FLV Player is one of the most versatile website media players available. You can easily embed it into your website to display any media format supported by the Adobe Flash Player. Now at version 4, the JW FLV Player has been in active development for many years and has an active forum & user community.

One of the biggest drawbacks of most website media players is the lack of support for content management systems, blogging platforms and other 3rd party applications. This is where the JW FLV Player shines with multiple plugins available to easily use the player in your WordPress blog, Drupal/Joomla website and many more applications.

Below is a demo of the player using it’s default skins. I was able to embed this player into the post using only one line of code!

Features

• Works with FLV, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF
• Supports RTMP and HTTP (Lighttpd) streaming, RSS, XSPF and ASX playlists
• Version 4 has fully skinning support and a skin library
• Uses FlashVars for configuration
• JavaScript API for interactivity with your website applications
• Full documentation and easy to follow tutorials
• Active community and Wiki
• Plugins available for easy integration with a wide variety of CMS, blog, and other systems.

The JW FLV Player is a free download for non-commericial use (Creative Commons license) and commercial licenses are available starting from 20 euros.

WebVideoTechniques is a big fan of the JW FLV Player and we use it for all of the videos on this website. We like it so much that we have given it a full 5 Star rating. If you are currently using different player or looking for a player for your next project, look no further than the JW FLV Player.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Learn more & downlad the JW FLV Player at http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

While you’re there be sure to checkout Jeroen’s other projects including the JW WMV Player (based on Silverlight), the JW Image Rotator and Longtail Video, a innovative way to monetize your online video projects. In the future we hope to look at these other projects in greater detail.

If you currently use the JW FLV Player or have any questions, be sure to post your feedback in the comments!

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This is the first free download offered by WebVideoTechniques. It is a free :30 clip that was shot with a Canon Vixia HF100. It has been slightly compressed to keep the file size down and converted to a QuickTime MOV 1280×720 at 30fps so it is easy to use with most editing software.

Web sample version and link to download after the break.

If you have any specific footage you would like to see, other formats to download or anything else to say, please post in the comments.

The license for this clip is 100% free for any personal or commercial use.

Click here to download the free HD footage (.zip – 123 MB)

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Squeeze 5 Pro is the latest release of Sorenson Media’s professional media encoding software. The new release is a major upgrade in features and usability compared to earlier versions. Improved audio and video quality, faster multithreaded encoding, and smoother workflow are just a few reasons Squeeze 5 should be in your arsenal of multimedia tools.

New Features

• Variety of audience & device preset bundles
• 3 new H.264 MPEG4 codecs including support for Flash H.264 video
• Enhanced filters for deinterlacing and other video & audio preprocessing
• Surround Sound 5.1 and 7.1 encoding
• Vast input codec support
• Watermarking for all output formats

Squeeze 5 Pro encodes to many popular formats including MPEG 1/2, MP3, MPEG 4 and H.264, Real, QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash FLV (Spark Pro and On2 VP6) and supports the advanced encoding settings which are not available in other encoding software. This is one of the main reasons that makes Squeeze a natural choice for video professionals looking to deliver the highest quality at the lowest filesize.

Unfortunately, all of that power does not come cheap. The pro version of Squeeze 5 is $599 for Windows and $779 for Mac. Both versions include the On2 VP6 codec for high quality FLV encoding. If you don’t need all the features of the regular pro version (eg – Windows Media, QuickTime, MPEG 1/2, Real encoding) the Squeeze 5 for Flash Pro might be a better option for only $299. A product comparison is available on the Squeeze 5 product page to help you find out which version is best for your needs.

Squeeze has come a long way over the years and Squeeze 5 raises the bar considerably. I think it is probably the all around best video encoding software available today.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Learn more and download a free trial at Sorenson Media

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The Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer (SUPER) is the Swiss Army knife of video transcoders. It can encode and decode virtually any media file and offers a plethora of options for encoding web videos. Although similar to MPEG Streamclip, SUPER seems to be more stable, advanced, and user friendly and does not rely on the QuickTime player for codec support.

Features

• Encode to/from FLV, H.264, MP4, MP2, WMV, AVI, MOV, DIVX, XVID, MP3, OGG and many more
• Advanced encoding settings and advanced H.264 options
• Integrated player and stream downloader
• Batch encoding
• Media file analyzer – View all codec and meta data for any audio or video file

Here is a screenshot (click for larger image):

Here is a sample FLV (480×272 30fps @ 1600kbps – 1.7 MB file) file that I encoded with SUPER of some free stock footage from OpenFootage.Net

Here is the same file as a MPEG 4 (H.264 480×272 30fps @ 1600kbps – 1.5 MB file)

At the same data rate, H.264 MPEG4 will look better than the FLV codec that SUPER uses. Fortunately, once Flash Player 9 is widely used we will be able to use H.264 in Flash as well.

I have encoded a few videos with SUPER and so far I am impressed with what you can get from this free tool. If you need to encode videos for your own website or need to compress your files before uploading to YouTube in order to stay under the 100MB limit, be sure to check SUPER out.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Learn more & download at: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

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With over 100 clips spanning 10 categories and growing, StockFootageForFree.com is a great source for free broadcast quality stock video clips. All you have to do is fill out a simple form and you can download free fullsize SD clips (NTSC 720×480 29.97fps DV AVI) for use in your productions. Currently offering useful categories like Nature, Sports, Transportation, Cities/Locations and more, your sure to find something and the price can’t be beat.

Learn more at http://www.stockfootageforfree.com

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Adding Flash Video to a website without using a service like Vimeo or YouTube can be challenging if you are not a Flash Action Script expert. Maybe you have a intranet or paid content site and you need to host the video files on your own server and want to display the files in a custom player that matches the look of your site.

Enter the Flowplayer, a free (GPL License) highly customizable Flash Video player jam packed with all the features you might need for you progressive or streaming video website.

Features:

• Works with progressive or streaming
• Basic colors can be altered and fully skinnable
• Playlist support
• Fullscreen mode
• Embed links
• Tons of features that can be configured using simple JavaScript
• Active development with full documentation and user community

Here is a demo using the default dark skin playing a clip I encoded (downloaded from OpenFootage.net)

View the demo

If you plan to use the Flowplayer for a commercial site, licenses are available starting at $75. The primary difference between the free and licensed versions is that in the free version you have to provide a link to the Flowplayer site and the Flowplayer logo is displayed over the video in fullscreen mode.

I did have trouble getting the Flowplayer to work with WordPress on IE7. Also, I really wish they would drop the huge watermark on fullscreen mode in the free version.

At this time I still recommend the JW FLV Media player if you are using WordPress or other CMS or since they offer lots of plug-ins to make it simple to embed videos in blog posts and do not show any watermarks in the free version.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Learn more & download @ http://flowplayer.org/

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Don’t have a camera that can shoot HD? Need HD stock footage for compression testing or maybe a few high resolution textures for your next project? Look no further than OpenFootage.net. Offering up gorgeous timelapse shots at 1080p, 720p, PAL, and NTSC, all of their content is available for free under a Creative Commons license. Not content only offering free HD stock footage, they also have super high-res panorama photos and sweet textures. You won’t find 10,000 files spanning 100 categories, but what they have so far is top-notch and hopefully the collection will continue to grow.

If you like what you see and use it in a project, make sure to donate a few dollars via the Paypal link on their site so that they are able to keep this great resource available.

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Squared 5 has released one of the few free solutions for encoding H.264 QuickTime MOV files that includes a graphical user interface. Since it uses the QuickTime 7 Player’s rendering engine, you must have the free player installed. A side benefit to this is that it will allow you export to the same codecs as the $30 QuickTime Pro, as well as AVI, DV and MPEG4.

With MPEG Streamclip you get what you pay for… The interface leaves much to be desired and a degree in video engineering is required to navigate the advanced output options presented.
If you are on a really tight budget and don’t mind learning some new tricks, MPEG Streamclip will work in a pinch for transcoding to and from a variety of formats.

One feature that makes MPEG Streamclip stand out is the ability to input a variety of formats that even professional-level encoding software will not support. You can input the following file types: MPEG, VOB, PS, M2P, MOD, VRO, DAT, MOV, DV, AVI, MP4, TS, M2T, MMV, REC, VID, AVR, M2V, M1V, MPV, AIFF, M1A, MP2, MPA, AC3 and more!

Hopefully they will continue to develop and improve this software to make it more user friendly for non-expert web video enthusiasts.

What’s Cool: It’s free, outputs h.264 QuickTime MOVs, offers many advanced encoding options not available in other low cost compression software, supports many input formats

Drawbacks: Cryptic interface, no user manual, confusing encoding options, no default encoding presets

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Learn More & Download: http://www.squared5.com/

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