Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Video Preview Module Ready

Bassa can now convert most video types to FLV (Adobe Flash Video). This is done by using mod_flv.so. After downloading the video content this module starts performing. mod_flv relies on ffmpeg and it works in an asynchronous fashion, that means it works in background even after download notification has been sent to the front-end. Once encoding and decoding is completed it will send the meta content notification to the front-end. After front-end updates it's meta content status, the users will start watching FLV movies (full movie or a preview, according to the configuration of mod_flv) on the web interface.

This feature will take Bassa to home networks. Now users can organize their downloaded multimedia content in a better way than they did earlier. Bassa developers are planning to build an RSS TV module for Bassa, so content shared by RSS TV feeds can be downloaded automatically and convert in to full length FLVs or previews by Bassa. This makes your internet downloads more manageable.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Bassa a New Mode of Operation

Bassa will support a new mode of operation called 24x7. Currently Bassa queue requests coming in to it and start downloading when it receives a signal at a predefined time. Similarly it will stop downloading the queued requests for the second signal. This is the way Bassa is working, which is ideal for low bandwidth networks.

But to enjoy the benefits of Bassa in a high bandwidth network above mentioned behavior should not impose limitations on its users. For high bandwidth networks there is no need of keeping requests in a queue until a signal is received. To achieve this we plan to introduce a 24x7 mode which means that Bassa will start downloading content as soon as the requests come from the user. Once this is enabled Bassa's configuration file will have a directive to set modes. If this directive is set to 24x7 it will be ready for high bandwidth networks by disabling queuing option, but keeping all other features boasted as many times in this site. If the directive is set to default it will be using the famous queuing option.

This mode of operation will also support bandwidth rate limiting. Therefore the bandwidth usage of Bassa could be limited before web browsers start starving without enough bandwidth.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Modular Bassa

Bassa gets hot swapable module support this summer. Now developers can develop modules to extend basic functionalities of Bassa. Modules can be loaded and unloaded without restarting Bassa server. Modules written for Bassa falls in to 4 categories. Further information on module architecture can be found in documentation. Apart from the module support there are plans to merge Bassa project with GADisk project.