Robust multimedia management capabilities are one of the most often-requested features of any content-management system. Drupal is used by giant media outlets (do Sony BMG MusicBox and MTV-UK qualify?) so they must be doing something right. There is always a place for improvement, though, and that is what the session co-hosted by a panel of seasoned Drupal experts was all about. The session covered image management, video management and audio management.
Three major modules covered in the image management section were:
- image - module allowing the creation of image-type nodes and basic image management that goes with it.
- ImageField - CCK type for image upload.
- ImageCache - is a dynamic image manipulation (e.g. scaling, cropping etc.) and caching tool. Manipulation actions can be chained to achieve non-trivial results. It also allows you to create a name space that corresponds to a set of image manipulation actions.
The panel members were the maintainers of these modules, as well, so they went deeply into the discussion of the capabilities and challenges of the modules. Some of the current, major shortcomings of image manipulation modules identified were: no support for WYSIWYG editors like TinyMCE and FCKeditor (note from us: imce can help with it) and certain level of duplication of features between the modules.
The panelists also covered some of the modules developed by other community members that are well worth considering. The list included: Asset, Image Assist, Media Mover. Not surprisingly, the authors of these modules were among the audience as well and kept gladly answering questions.
I must admit, I was greatly impressed by the capabilities of the Media Mover module. It is definitely a module to keep a close look at. The list of the features of this module is too extensive and can not be covered in this blog post, but just to give you a taste - it even has a working S3 integration!
Video support in Drupal is also rich. However, in the opinion of the panelists, the Video module is probably not the best place to start at, simply because the module has been poorly maintained, lately. Modules worth checking out include: Media Field, File Field, FlashVideo. And yet again Media Mover module, which seems awesome for video as well.
The major module for audio manipulation, in Drupal, is simply and intuitively called Audio. The main problem when using the audio module is that the Flash player can only accept mp3 files encoded with certain bit-rate. Apparently a module called Transformer can help, but it is still in Contrib, with no official release. If you get stuck, seek for help from (guess which module?) - Media Mover module, apparently a Swiss-knife of multimedia management in Drupal.