Problem with FFMPEG and PHP

Question

I know this isn't exactly a programming question per se, but rather a settings question, but still:

I'm trying to convert video with FFMPEG with a PHP script, following this tutorial:

http://vexxhost.com/blog/2007/05/20/how-to-convertencode-files-to-flv-using-ffmpeg-php/

FFMPEG works perfectly and I've used it from the command line a number of times. PHP also seems to work fine. I've also installed ffmpeg-php and it seems to be loading file.

The problem lies when I try to do the following in PHP:

$srcFile = "p1.avi";

$ffmpegObj = new ffmpeg_movie($srcFile);

No matter what, PHP will return this:

Warning: can't open movie file p1.avi in /var/www/converter.php on line xx

Obviously, whatever call I do afterwards with $ffmpegObj will throw a fatal error. I'm absolutely stuck and extensive googling hasn't helped much.

If you must know, I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 with the default LAMP server packages as well as php5-ffmpeg, and I've compiled ffmpeg following a tutorial I found on Ubuntuforums (I'd link to it but stackoverflow won't let me)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try to specify full path to you movie like following:

$srcFile = "/home/path/something/p1.avi";
$ffmpegObj = new ffmpeg_movie($srcFile);

Answer 2

Does the user you run the script as have permission to open the file? Check with ls -l /var/www/flashvideo/p1.avi

Answer 3

FINALLY! As some of you suggested, neither the directory nor the file had the proper permissions to be modified by my script. I changed them and everything works now =) . I'm such an idiot for not noticing this for hours :P

Thank you guys!