Rest in peace “psstream”
Alright folks, I have been missing for a while but here I am again!
I have to say I’m impressed by the feedback I got from you on the psstream PHP extension. However, it has been a while now since I reached the conclusion that the whole idea of psstream is essentially flawed. Don’t get me wrong, the software does its job but it leaves a lot to be desired from it once you want high-volume streaming on your website (maybe on a youtube clone or something). Here are the big issues:
1. Basically, the PHP virtual machine eats a lot of memory, it starts quite slow and has a relatively low limit on how many PHP processes can run in parallel. Streaming from PHP engages all that machinery without justice and consumes a ridiculous amount of resources for something that shouldn’t!
2. Usually we run PHP on a web-server (Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd etc.). This means that all the data that PHP delivers to the clients actually goes through the web-server, therefore increasing to the problem.
3. Psstream uses a moov-seek code that was taken from the great guys at code-shop.com and it did the job. However, (without disrespect) that code has grossly fallen behind (even the guys at code-shop have re-written it from scratch in newer versions of their modules). It is not optimized, uses quite a bit of memory (to load the atoms) and is simply not optimized at all.
These would be just a few (but the implications are much deeper). As a consequence I have written a brand new streamer called Loomiere/Streamer that yields far higher performance than psstream. Therefore I regret to announce that as of today, the psstream PHP extension is officially discontinued.
On the bright side, you can now use (and contribute to) the new streamer that promises a lot. I have written a more detailed article about Loomiere/Stream on my new blog valeriu.palos.ro.
So you’re invited to check it out.
“psstream” is dead, long live “Loomiere/Stream”!
Enjoy!
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