How to encode a video using PHP?

Question

I'm interested in installing ffmpeg or somesuch on my server so I can upload files, automatically encode them to FLV and then serve up a embedded player to use on my pages.

The problem is that I don't know where to start. I don't want to have to spend days coding a web based encoding service, as I'm more interested in using an out of the box solution.

My research so far has led me to FFMPEG and possibly Gallery2: it has a ffmpeg integrated and the gallery 2 framework provides user accounts and FTP upload facilities.

Is anyone aware of other open source encoding solutions which you can install on Linux?

Answer 1

There is also memcoder, that does the same thing that ffmpeg does, but you will have to code the glue that binds ffmpeg/memcoder, PHP and the uploaded videos together.

The general workflow would be something like:

• Present form to user with PHP
• Upload file through post
• Verify uploaded file is video both client and serverside
• Store uploaded video in a known folder
• From PHP, run a CLI command with all the desired parameters and store the file in another known location
• Delete original file if success (optional)
• Store in DB the path to the created file
• Serve content
• Profit!

Answer 2

You could also have a look at VLC since it can transcode and act as a server for your FLV streams. The main application is a user interface to playback the video but it can be invoked from the command-line to do the serving - rather than playing.

Also there is libvlc which is the C library upon which VLC is written. VLC is based upon ffmpeg and might just make your life a little easier.

Answer 3

You should check out the docs for your chosen encoder, I have used ffmpeg successfully in the past. Then your workflow looks something like this.

• Handle the file upload with PHP
• Use exec() to shell out to your encoder and encode the video.
• When exec() returns, you can then serve the video in your page

ffmpeg was really easy to get up and running with a couple of command line arguments.

Answer 4

There is ffmpeg extension for PHP.