I would like to note that it may be useful, immediately or in the future, to have an option availible where a user/member could download the same video at different file sizes or preview the stream.
Although with the advent of Broadband file size is quickly becoming a negligible issue (theoretically), people are now browsing the videos by downloading videos they may or may not like, and then viewing them. This decreases efficiency and places unnecessary stress on the servers.
It is possible to dynamically step down stream and file sizes using the Windows Media 9 Series system. 9 Series Producer allows files to be generated from any format to a ASF file of your choice, while 9 Series Services allows server-based streaming.
With the Windows .NET Gundam (now .NET Hacker) system of bloatware, IIS directories can be configured to dynamically generate content on-the-fly by mounting a application service to a Virtual Directory. It's like mounting an audio CD as a WMA folder.
If it is, for some reason, undesired to have Windows .NET Gundam, you can just hack a command line content generator and put it in the executable bin folders. There should be a app somewhere that'll take:
a-m-v.org/cgi-bin/convert?b="128"&path="/content/video.rm"
and actually pipe out the results instead of writing a file.
Forget the security problems. Go ahead, post your root password. It doesn't matter if you're running PHP. Especially if it's on Apache running as root. Swiss cheese.
