Video

Players can upload videos to play in rooms.

Formats
Currently, the only formats supported for videos in the Whirled are YouTube and FLV (Flash Video). In the future, we plan to integrate (in some security-conscious way) the FFmpeg tool so that users can upload any video type, and we'll be able to convert it to FLV for them (which is how all video will be played within Whirled).

For YouTube videos, you will need the YouTube video ID and the video needs to have embedding enabled to work.

The main advantage of FLV is that Whirled can contain a nifty YouTube-esque video player that will do a better job of streaming the video, as well as provide controls for pausing, seeking, etc.

FLV videos tend to be lower quality, but much smaller file size than other video formats. Therefore, even when Whirled does allow upload of several video formats, it will be faster for users on slower connections to convert the video themselves before uploading it.

Converting Videos to FLV
There is a Windows-only FLV Encoder called Riva VX that is free.

If you're not running windows, and/or want to be a little more adventurous, the FFmpeg tool is capable of converting just about anything you want to make it think is a video into an FLV. It is pretty widely used, and the FFmpeg page has a list of other projects that use it, some of which include GUIs.

If you get the command-line tool working, you can quickly convert any supported video type to an FLV (without fancy options for resampled resolution or audio bitrate), with this command:

ffmpeg -i 