Do-it-Yourself YouTube Uses Open Source Project Panda and Amazon EC2
Open source project Panda provides Software to create your own do-it-yourself video platforms -- provided you also pay for the Amazon Web Services.
For the do-it-yourself video software to do its work, you must register with Amazon's Web Services. Required are Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3). The Web Services provide storage and processing on a rental basis when combined with the corresponding software packages.
The Panda software comes free as Open Source and provides all uploading, transcoding and streaming services to the JW FLV (Flash) Player built into the web pages for playbacks (although you can switch to other video players). If Panda is bundled with the Amazon cloud, the software comes preinstalled with FFmpeg for video transcoding and supports formats such as FLV and H.264 for Flash Players and iPhones. Data for video, encoding, accounts and encoding profiles reside in the SimpleDB distributed database, while the uploaded and encoded video data is stored in S3.
On their project page, the developers describe the video integration using an "elegant" REST API as "completely painless," with implementation "in a matter of hours." The API documentation describes how to create, upload and clear the videos. Both YAML and XML are supported (with YAML recommended). Data is loaded into a separate window and a daemon takes over to encode the data in the required format. Panda then sends a message to the application that the video is ready to go.
Behind the open source project is the British firm New Bamboo, specialists in software development based on Ruby on Rails. As expected, you can integrate Panda in your Ruby on Rails applications; details are on a Panda webpage. The New Bamboo Panda source code is available for download under an MIT license at the github site.
Prices for the Amazon services depend on the actual monthly processing required and start at $0.10 for 1.7 GByte memory on a 32-bit platform. You can use Amazon's convenient monthly calculator to figure out the cost based on your anticipated usage.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Akamai Will Host kernel.org
The organization dedicated to cloud-based solutions has agreed to host kernel.org to deliver long-term stability for the development team.
-
Linux Kernel 6.14 Released
The latest Linux kernel has arrived with extra Rust support and more.
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.