Video Transcoding and Frames Extraction Module

This new built-in module allows for quick & easy operation with videos, extracting thumbnails and whole galleries of screengrabs, and converting existing videos to different formats & bandwidth speeds, working within the MAS® environment.

The image extraction tool allows to generate a given number of images, distributed through the movie length, or floating number of snapshots taken at every X-th frame. Then the user has the option to choose a single image and turn it into a thumbnail for the video, or to select a few images to use at the site tour and members areas as previews of the video set, or to even create a whole photo gallery of screencaps and automatically add it in MAS® as a photo content set linked to the video.

The video conversion tool takes existing videos directly from the MAS® content folders and can convert them to other popular formats (quicktime mov, flv, h.264, wmv, avi) using different user-defined presets of encoding options. In development is an extension allowing to cut trailers and/or break the full-length video into smaller chunks. After the encoding is complete, the user has the option to preview the result videos and either remove them and try with another preset, or publish them on site.

It's also important to know that the video transcoding operations themselves are carried out by a MAS® built-in background processes manager, ensuring uninterrupted server-side operation regardless of the state of the client browser. This also means that once the MAS® user has started the conversion commands for a given video, he can move on to other tasks without waiting for the server to complete, then check back later.

But have in mind that this module has been added for convenience and it does not pretend to be as effective and producing high-quality results, as a professional service from a 3rd party encoding company could be. It may also add some significant overhead to the web-server load, especially if large volumes of videos are put on the production line. This can be successfully circumvented though, for larger companies,
if the MAS® system is installed on a separate backend machine to carry on the heavy processes, while the websites are hosted off of frontend machines with NFS connections to the MAS® backend server and content storage.

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Background Execution Manager

To optimize performance, keep the server from being bogged up with hundreds of requests, and free up the admin from waiting to complete long lasting operations, all CPU, HDD and MySQL intensive processes like rebuilding pages, creating thumbs, creating zip's and video extraction&transcoding are now handled on a client/server technology.

The admin interface (the client) is creating tasks and is freed up immediately. A daemon module running at the background is monitoring the tasks queue and starting the pending processes based on their priority and order in the line. Depending on the task type multiple threads can be executed simultaneously (for example ffmpeg transcoding a long video at the background, and at the same time sections get rebuild).

This technology is safe, because the running processes will not be interrupted if for example the user's connection fails.
It also allows the admin to start for example thumbnails rebuilding at a huge batch, which may take hours to complete, and turn off his computer, leaving the system working. Once the client is logged back in he can monitor the current status, delete some pending tasks or rearrange the order and priority of tasks in the queue.

Favorites

This long anticipated feature is now part of the standard MAS® package. It allows the implementation of Favorites feature in members areas, so that members can add arbitrary content sets to their Favorites list and view or remove them from there. Completely templateable.

Comments

Another feature that was asked for for a long time. Allows members to leave comments on any content set.
The site admin can then approve, delete and moderate the comments before publishing. Published comments can also be viewed by tour visitors (non-members) but they cannot add their own.

More new features:

Backup and restore of the entire, or parts of the MAS® database, directly through the admin interface

System health check (to verify that all expected server-side settings are in place);
cleanup of the directory system from MAS®-generated files which are no longer in use;
flush of old stats and logs (manual or automatic) to keep the database small & healthy.

Full activity log, for admins with superuser access to check who/when/what had been done within the MAS® interface

Multiple sort orders per page (members can choose the sort order dynamically)

Multiple categories and gallery templates assigned to a single content set (different templates per site)

Support for flash content streamed via LightTPD, Wowza or Adobe FMS

Fully integrated support for Level-3 and EdgeCast CDN networks (installed on demand)

Native integration with EzDRM platform for encoding and protecting videos in Windows Media or Adobe Flash formats.

100% compatible and preloaded leased feeds powered by SexEntertain (SexEntertain Content & Plugins, Vivid, Hustler Content, FullonVideo, Cherry Boxxx, Erotic Men, Total Hentai) (installed on demand)

Advanced options for automatic content rotation

Batch actions for quick altering of multiple content set properties (categories, templates, find&replace in titles/descriptions and more); Undo of last changes

Batch action for mass-change (resize) of existing faceimages

News & Events for multiple sites

Ability to upload standalone images & media through the interface, to be used at news/events messages

System-generated event messages for new & upcoming content updates

Secured feedback mailing form and MAS® admin login form (with captcha verification)

Alert & prevention system against injection of malicios commands in templates

Passthru of userdefined variables (useful for tours - webmaster tracking codes etc.)

Obscured (hashed) content paths (installed on demand)

Manual selection of content to be displayed on certain sections

Automatic counters of content sets/pictures/videos to be displayed on the site

Inheriting template classes into multiple sites/sections, or directly including the parsed result of one section into another

Star rating

Improved scanners for new content

Support for external event handlers on rebuild (installed on demand)

Numerous bugfixes, performance and security improvements and more template tags.