Panda is an open source solution for video uploading, encoding and streaming.

Panda architecture diagram

Unlike other video platforms, Panda is not just a service for encoding your videos for the web; Panda handles the whole process. From the upload form to streaming, Panda takes control.

By providing an elegant REST API, Panda makes it completely painless to implement full video uploading, encoding and streaming functionality to your web application in a matter of hours.

  • Runs completely within Amazon's Web Services utilising EC2, S3 and SimpleDB.
  • Everything contained within one elegant Merb application.
  • Support for the encoding profiles which FFmpeg supports. They include FLV for flash and H264 for iPhone.
  • Panda gem for painless integration with Ruby on Rails and Merb.
  • Lovely little admin dashboard for managing your videos.

Runs in the cloud

Panda run's completely in the cloud computing environment provided by Amazon's array of web services. The application runs on a customised EC2 instance with everything pre-installed, including FFmpeg and an plethora of codecs. SimpleDB is used to store all of data for video, encoding, accounts and encoding profiles. Uploaded and encoded video files are then stored on S3.

Simple to integrate

Your Panda EC2 instance will provide a simple REST (both YAML and XML formats support) API for listing, creating, editing and deleting videos. When a new video is created on your site the actual file upload takes place in a popup or iframe. Doing so means that the large video file is uploaded directly to your Panda EC2 instance so you don't have to handle it within your application. The server also is configured to support an upload progress bar so user's can see the video upload in progress.

Once a video has been uploaded the encoding daemon will pickup the job and encode the video to the encoding profiles you specify. Upon completion Panda will send a notification back to your application to let it know the video has finished encoding and can be watched.

The superb JW FLV Player is used by default, but because you've got access to all of the video files you can use any Flash video player out there.

Admin panel to manage encodings

Panda admin panel

Documentation and Tutorials

Getting started

This guide describes launching your own Panda instance on EC2 and configuring the application, ready for integration.

Integrating with Ruby on Rails

Get your new Panda install integrated with a Ruby on Rails application, allowing your users to upload their own videos.

API Documentation

Full documentation for the REST API Panda provides.