Question

I have a server that’s taking video clips with a webcam and placing them in #{Rails.root}/app/assets/videos. The problem is I can’t see newly created video clips until the server is restarted. Is there a workaround for this?

Here’s the code in the controller:

@file_name = Time.now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S-%p") + ".mp4"
system("ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -t 10 -i /dev/video0
  #{Rails.root.to_s}/app/assets/videos/#{@file_name}")

And in the view:

<video src="/assets/<%= @file_name %>" width="320" height="240">
Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>

Answer 1

Rails expects that public/ contains only static assets that are all there when the rails server starts (or are built and placed there during the rails initialization) and will not change until new code is deployed.

You will need to use some other storage system to store your video files if you want it to work well with Rails. You will need to update your Rails application to know how to deal with another storage system.

Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud Files are decent choices, but a well-known directory on your server might work as well (it just can’t be public/). You can use the CarrierWave gem to help.