The support is hopeless, the forum is dead.Many shared hosting providers dont support ffmpeg...
Your taking a risk...i have done my 50 Bucks on this one

This component is excellent. I faced few problems but owner of AchTube give me time and solved all my problems. The Current version is very excellent having Auto Configuration. I am using it.

the component seems to be working very good, alas is lacking on 2 things:
- 1.5 support, let's hope developers will catch up
- external hosting for videos: there's amazon s3 which is costing nothing and is very reliable, why not use their storage instead of your current webhosting?
so why not try to allow video storage on different location?
Storage and connection costs are decreasing, please give us the chance not to pay a 10000$ bill!

I have been using Joomla since it's inception (and even Mambo previous to that) and this is the first time I have written a review for any component. I felt it necessary to do so since I have been in the streaming media field since 2000 and have not been able to find anything that seamlessly fits into my business model as easily as ACHTube.

Although ACHTube is an excellent component I also know that there is a LOT of room for both improvement and customization.

One thing to understand before purchasing this component is that your server needs to have ffmpeg installed. ACHTube does not do the conversions for you. The shared hosting service I installed the component into did not originally have it installed and Ahmet, the author, was kind enough to spend the time with me and the host to ensure that it was installed correctly. Since that time everything has worked flawlessly. Ahmet was also proactive in following up with me a few days later to see how everything was going and to see if I needed any additional help or had questions.

One feature I really find valuable is that each user has the ability to add, delete, and modify their own videos but not anyone elses. Sounds like pretty basic stuff but I haven't been able to find too many other components that will allow people to post and manage their own content in your site.

One of the main reasons that I think I like this component so much is that I spent over $1,000 trying to develop something similar a couple of years ago but never received the results I was looking for. Now, out of the box, there is a component that does EXACTLY what I was looking for and it only cost me fifty bucks.

I spent a lot of effort into sorting out the problem with ACHTube1.6.6 having no videos uploaded and beeing sent to a new uploadpage or the "fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object.

First I believed ffmpeg and ffmpeg-php is not correctly installed on my server and I hired twice installservice from so called experts for these extensions for 75,-$ each. I did it twice because first time I thought the guy did not do it correctly.

After beeing able to convert all kinds of videoformats to flv, like avi, mp4, 3gp, mov and wmv from the command line (terminal) - enter for example ffmpeg -i /tmp/test.avi /tmp/out3.flv - wich makes working flvs on my server, I started to research the code of ACHTube and how it comunicates with ffmpeg and I found a piece of code that I corrected and now - what a wonder - I can upload all videos that I have a codec installed for.

So I assume most of the problems that arise from a not working ACHTube installation is a false or outdated communication between achtube.php and ffmpeg.

I made the change in code in achtube.php version with ffmpeg-php support and I made the change to achtube.php without ffmpeg-php support. It works on both versions successfully.

Now I admit ACHtube functionallity is very important to me and for my Joomla-Site, so I don't mind to have spend 2 weeks, several hours a day on resolving this problem but I don't agree in spending that much money for developers not doing their homework. So I am not willing to give my information for free. Eather Ahmet is sending 150,-$ (for specialist install of ffmpeg - which was not needed) to my Paypal account jbennert@web.de and I will post my information and provide modified achtube.php - files or everybody who is interested can send me 10,-$ each to jbennert@web.de and I will send the files via email.

Just to make sure: My modified achtube.php files are for those of you that have the problem to get a fatal script error when using original achtube.php (the one that supports ffmpeg-php) and the ones of you using achtube.php without ffmpeg-php support and you get a new uploadpage presented after you uploaded a video with no video uploaded at all.

And everybody must know: When ffmpeg is installed on a server - I am talking linux server - it must be compiled with all the videocodecs that you want to convert to flv. If your host asures you that ffmpeg is installed it does not mean every videocodec is supported.

So I invite you to ask Ahmet to refund my 150,-$ I spent senselessly and I will tell him what's wrong or you can send 10,-$ via Paypal to jbennert@web.de and I will provide the files via email.

If you don't mind to spend the 10,-$ I think you are a brave person but you must know that I really don't know your problem with ACHTube and I can not help you at all with solving this problems. You pay on your own risk - eather it works for you or it does not. So spending the 10,-$ is like a kind of gamble, you must know this before sending me money.

For you to see I'm not talking blabla - see the demosite: http://buerger.tv/achtubetest and give it a try.

For a special offer I give the whole ACHTube 1.6.6 including the fix to the first 15 People that pay me 10,-$. That means once I got my money back I wasted on behalf of this buggy component the offer expires.

For example - try to upload a wmv file to the official ACHTube Demo Server - it does not work until today. Do it on my demoserver and you see I have sorted it out.

+ Its true, one of its good things is that this is the only component that converts from many files to FLV.

- This is the most expensive component I have use on my site and yet, it very poor administration interface. It mixes with Joomla's news so you cant use it as an independent component.

And by the way, a Donationware is a program that you can use with out asking for money, it under the users consideration to donate. And in this component, it ask you to donate a high amount of money in order to send you the component, that a Comercial License not Donationware. I understand that this kind of programs require lots of work, but it should be under Comercial License.

looks good, but what video formats do you support? Do you change everything to flv?

A few things are lacking:
1. A comment section,
2. CB tab to list the user's uploaded videos,
3. Modules for search, most viewed videos, most recently uploaded videos, and all videos etc

Also can you write an audio component that would allow users to upload music, speeches etc?

Owner's reply:
ACHTube Component uses Joomla content component for writing to all video details. It means you can use Joomla search module and the outhers for ACHTube Component. I made it so because of i want to make flexy component. I didn't use any outher modul in my demo site because i want to dwell upon ACHTube Component. You can use all concerned modul for Joomla content with ACHTube Component.



And I'm planning add audio, pictures and books to this component.



FFmpeg support all types of videos so below:

3g2 3gp2 format

3gp 3gp format

4xm 4X Technologies format

MTV MTV format

RoQ Id RoQ format

aac ADTS AAC

ac3 raw ac3

adts ADTS AAC

aiff Audio IFF

alaw pcm A law format

amr 3gpp amr file format

asf asf format

asf_stream asf format

au SUN AU Format

avi avi format

avs AVISynth

crc crc testing format

daud D-Cinema audio format

dsicin Delphine Software International CIN format

dts raw dts

dv DV video format

dvd MPEG2 PS format (DVD VOB)

ea Electronic Arts Multimedia Format

ffm ffm format

film_cpk Sega FILM/CPK format

flac raw flac

flic FLI/FLC/FLX animation format

flv flv format

framecrc framecrc testing format

gif GIF Animation

gxf GXF format

h261 raw h261

h263 raw h263

h264 raw H264 video format

idcin Id CIN format

image2 image2 sequence

image2pipe piped image2 sequence

ingenient Ingenient MJPEG

ipmovie Interplay MVE format

m4v raw MPEG4 video format

matroska Matroska file format

mjpeg MJPEG video

mm American Laser Games MM format

mmf mmf format

mov mov format

mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 QuickTime/MPEG4/Motion JPEG 2000 format

mp2 MPEG audio layer 2

mp3 MPEG audio layer 3

mp4 mp4 format

mpeg MPEG1 System format

mpeg1video MPEG video

mpeg2video MPEG2 video

mpegts MPEG2 transport stream format

mpegvideo MPEG video

mpjpeg Mime multipart JPEG format

mulaw pcm mu law format

mxf MXF format

nsv NullSoft Video format

null null video format

nut nut format

nuv NuppelVideo format

ogg Ogg Vorbis

psp psp mp4 format

psxstr Sony Playstation STR format

rawvideo raw video format

rm rm format

s16be pcm signed 16 bit big endian format

s16le pcm signed 16 bit little endian format

s8 pcm signed 8 bit format

shn raw shorten

smk Smacker Video

sol Sierra SOL Format

svcd MPEG2 PS format (VOB)

swf Flash format

tiertexseq Tiertex Limited SEQ format

tta true-audio

u16be pcm unsigned 16 bit big endian format

u16le pcm unsigned 16 bit little endian format

u8 pcm unsigned 8 bit format

vcd MPEG1 System format (VCD)

vmd Sierra VMD format

vob MPEG2 PS format (VOB)

voc Creative Voice File format

wav wav format

wc3movie Wing Commander III movie format

wsaud Westwood Studios audio format

wsvqa Westwood Studios VQA format

wv WavPack

yuv4mpegpipe YUV4MPEG pipe format



Thanks for your interest.

This component completely "bombs" joomla! Thank you very much. The installation worked like a charm.

Just only the integration with "Community Builder" is missing :-)

I like this component very much.....thanx alot and well done. keep up the good work..

Hi,


I have install and tested this component today (on local site), great job, install is very easy and backend is usefull.

flash player is very good
maybe in the futur update is support fullscreen ?


great support too :)

Thanks

Owner's reply:
Thanks,

You don't doubt that, Fullscreen will add in next vers.

Best Regards.