TiCijev is a set of several simple shell scripts and PHP files which allow you to easily set up and maintain a rudimentary video hosting site. The interface is designed for small children with the single left click as the only supported action. It works on GNU/Linux, though ambitious users could make it work on a modern BSD, MacOS or Windows.
TiCijev shell scripts use commands from the following packages: GNU coreutils, GNU findutils, GNU grep, GNU sed, GAWK and FFmpeg.
Setting up TiCijev is simple. First, clone this repository to the computer that will be hosting the videos (we assume the hostname of your TiCijev server is tcserver):
$ cd /home/user
$ git clone https://github.com/unixba/ticijev.git
Cloning into 'ticijev'...
remote: Counting objects: 14, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Total 14 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (14/14), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Now enter the directory ticijev which contains the cloned repository:
$ cd ticijev
In the rest of this document, we assume that our working directory is the one containing the cloned TiCijev repository (i.e. /home/user/ticijev in my case).
The TiCijev repository already contains several sample videos, which you can use for testing before you start adding your own content. Begin by unpacking the file sample.tar.gz:
$ gunzip -c sample.tar.gz | tar xf -
This command will unpack all the videos into a directory named videos.
Before moving on, it is advisable to survey the contents of the videos directory and see how the files are organized. TiCijev uses a few very simple file naming conventions and you can probably figure it all out by simply looking at the contents of the videos directory (even if you don't, those conventions are explained later in this document).
Now execute the script named update.sh to populate the videos directory with files that are needed by TiCijev:
$ ./update.sh
If you wish to see each step performed by update.sh, run it with the -v or --verbose option.
At this point, your TiCijev document root is set up inside the videos directory and you are ready to start hosting the videos. If you have PHP installed on the system, the simplest way to test the setup is to use PHP's built-in web server:
$ ( cd videos && php -S 0:7777 )
PHP 5.6.29 Development Server started at Sun Mar 10 19:15:01 2019
Listening on http://0:7777
Document root is /home/user/ticijev/videos
Press Ctrl-C to quit.
_
Alternatively, you can set up Apache listening on port 7777 with document root pointing to your videos directory.
Now open your web browser and navigate to http://tcserver:7777/ to test your TiCijev setup.
Notice that the port 7777 here is chosen arbitrarily, only for testing. In a permanent setup, you will probably have an Apache web server listening on port 80 with a virtual host dedicated for your TiCijev videos.
TiCijev shell scripts expect all your videos to reside inside the videos directory. If you wish to keep your videos on a different physical device, you first need to mount your device onto the videos directory, or make videos a symbolic link pointing to a directory on your video storage device.
TiCijev only supports MP4 and WEBM videos, which can be played natively by most web browsers. If you have a video in another format, you first need to convert it to either MP4 or WEBM before it can be hosted by TiCijev.
Each video must be contained inside its own directory. One directory can only contain a single video file with an extension of .mp4 or .webm. For instance, to add an MP4 file of a butterfly, you first make a subdirectory inside videos, then copy the video file into it:
$ mkdir videos/my-butterfly-video
$ cp ~/Downloads/butterfly.mp4 videos/my-butterfly-video/
Keep adding as many videos as you wish in the same manner, but please do avoid using whitespace in the names of files and directories (e.g. instead of my first video use my-first-video).
After you have finished adding your videos, execute the script update.sh to update the contents of the videos directory:
$ ./update.sh
TiCijev allows you to organize your videos into collections, which function in a similar way as playlists. To make a collection, simply group multiple video directories into a single common directory, for example:
$ mkdir videos/collection1
$ mkdir videos/collection1/turtle
$ mkdir videos/collection1/horse
$ mkdir videos/collection1/birds
$ cp ~/Downloads/turtle.mp4 videos/collection1/turtle/
$ cp ~/Downloads/whitehorse.webm videos/collection1/horse/
$ cp ~/Downloads/smallbirds.webm videos/collection1/birds/
Do not forget to execute update.sh each time you make changes to the videos directory:
$ ./update.sh
From this point on, the three videos turtle.mp4, whitehorse.webm and smallbirds.webm will be treated as a single collection and will be automatically played one after another as a playlist (i.e. when you play any one of them, TiCijev will play them all in sequence).
The order in which these video files are played is determined by the names of the directories that contain them. In our example, the video directories are named turtle, horse and birds, which means that, due to alphanumeric ordering, the video in the birds directory will be played first, followed by the video in the horse directory, followed by the video in the turtle directory. When the last video in a collection has finished playing, TiCijev plays the first video of the same collection again.
To enforce a specific order of playing the videos in a collection, simply name the video directories in a way that will guarantee your desired ordering. In our example, to make the turtle video play first, followed by the horse video, followed by the birds video, we could simply name the corresponding directories 01-turtle, 02-horse and 03-birds, respectively:
$ mv videos/collection1/turtle videos/collection1/01-turtle
$ mv videos/collection1/horse videos/collection1/02-horse
$ mv videos/collection1/birds videos/collection1/03-birds
Again, execute update.sh to have TiCijev notice your changes:
$ ./update.sh
You can add a custom title to each video by making a one-line file named title in the corresponding video directory, for instance:
$ echo 'White Horse' >videos/collections1/02-horse/title
If the title file is missing from a video directory, TiCijev will display the name of the video directory in place of the custom title.
In the same manner, you can add a description for a video by making a file named about inside the video directory, for example:
$ cat <<END >videos/collections1/02-horse/about
This is a footage of a beautiful white flying
horse recorded on a mountain near Nowhereland.
END
You can also add the files title and/or about to a collection directory to describe the entire collection of videos.
Note that all title and about files are optional and do not affect the functioning of TiCijev in any way.
When you execute update.sh, it only carries out operations which are required to reflect the latest changes in the videos directory. You can run update.sh with the -f or --force option to force updating all of the files. Using this option should normally never be needed, but may help if something breaks (e.g. thumbnails are generated incorrectly).
Clicking the TiCijev logo is context-sensitive. If you cannot figure out what it does, consider this project a failure.
Licensed under GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later.