Can anyone help me understand the ffmpeg thing? I'm lost !

[kigoobe]

Hi guys

I was trying to understand how the ffmpeg works, but even after a lot of googling, couldn't advance a bit.

Ok, in case of normal file uploading, we have something like -

[PHP]$movie=$_FILES['movie'];[/PHP] and then we use something like [PHP]ftp_put($conn_id, 'public_html/folder/'.basename($movie['name']), $movie['tmp_name'], FTP_BINARY);[/PHP] to do the uploading in our server.

In ffmpeg, I am getting codes like [PHP]ffmpeg -i ellas_first_year.avi -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 ellas_first_year.flv[/PHP] which apparently do the job, but I am unable to understand how to relate the [PHP]$movie=$_FILES['movie'];[/PHP] with the above piece of code.

I would greatly appreciate if someone can throw any light on this. Thanks friends.

[Motoma]

Hi guys

I was trying to understand how the ffmpeg works, but even after a lot of googling, couldn't advance a bit.

Ok, in case of normal file uploading, we have something like -

[PHP]$movie=$_FILES['movie'];[/PHP] and then we use something like [PHP]ftp_put($conn_id, 'public_html/folder/'.basename($movie['name']), $movie['tmp_name'], FTP_BINARY);[/PHP] to do the uploading in our server.

In ffmpeg, I am getting codes like [PHP]ffmpeg -i ellas_first_year.avi -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 ellas_first_year.flv[/PHP] which apparently do the job, but I am unable to understand how to relate the [PHP]$movie=$_FILES['movie'];[/PHP] with the above piece of code.

I would greatly appreciate if someone can throw any light on this. Thanks friends.

After assigning to $movie, $movie will be an array containing some specific information about your uploaded file. Run a print_r() on $movie in order to see exactly what information is being stored.

What you will likely want to do is place either $movie['tmp_name'] in a command line call to ffmpeg to begin your video conversion.

[kigoobe]

Hi Motoma

Thanks a lot for your reply. Yes, I did, I am having both tmp_name and name as array elements. Later, using $movie['name'], I am having this piece of code -

[PHP]$upl="/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i dc3.avi -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 /home/user/public_html/movie/1192136241.flv";
exec($upl);[/PHP] where I got dc3.avi from $movie['name'], result, I am having an empty page on submission (I'm doing exit; just after calling the exec() function.)

And nothing is getting uploaded in the folder. The folder is set to 777, and I am uploading images and other docs (words, excel) successfully there using ftp_put().

Changing $movie['name'] to $movie['tmp_name'] where dc3.avi becomes something like /tmp/phpUysX1B doesn't help neither.

Do you see anything else that can cause a problem?
Thanks a lot man, I appreciate this.

[Motoma]

Hi Motoma

Thanks a lot for your reply. Yes, I did, I am having both tmp_name and name as array elements. Later, using $movie['name'], I am having this piece of code -

[PHP]$upl="/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i dc3.avi -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 /home/user/public_html/movie/1192136241.flv";
exec($upl);[/PHP] where I got dc3.avi from $movie['name'], result, I am having an empty page on submission (I'm doing exit; just after calling the exec() function.)

And nothing is getting uploaded in the folder. The folder is set to 777, and I am uploading images and other docs (words, excel) successfully there using ftp_put().

Changing $movie['name'] to $movie['tmp_name'] where dc3.avi becomes something like /tmp/phpUysX1B doesn't help neither.

Do you see anything else that can cause a problem?
Thanks a lot man, I appreciate this.

Hey kigoobe,

You are going to want to take a look at the move_uploaded_file() function. You will perform this on the $movie['tmp_name'] typically place it in $upload_dir.$movie['name']. Then you will want to use $upload_dir.$movie['name'] and give that to ffmpeg. You will also need to make sure that you specify an full pathname to your output file.

The reason why ffmpeg would not work on the temporary file is because it uses the filename to glean what format the original video is in, if you do not tell it explicitly.

Hope this help,
Motoma

[kigoobe]

Hi Motoma

Thanks a lot for your reply. Yes, things are getting clear to me now slowly. I was using ftp_put() earlier, so I went with that for uploading the original movie ... However, there're still some issues. Here is my full code.

[php]
$uploadfile=$_FILES['multimedia']['tmp_name'];
$uploadname=$_FILES['multimedia']['name'];
$pos = strrpos($uploadname, '.');
$extension = substr($uploadname, $pos);
$newName = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'_'.time();
$movieName=$newName.$extension;
$flvName=$newName.'.flv';
$directory='public_html/movies/';
$destination_movie=$directory.'movies-original/'.basename($movieName);
$destination_flv=$directory.'movies-flv/'.basename($flvName);
if(ftp_put($conn_id, $destination_movie, $uploadfile, FTP_BINARY)) {
$upl = "ffmpeg -i ".$destination_movie." -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 ".$destination_flv;
exec($upl);
}
[/php]
Result, I am getting the original file uploaded in the proper directory, but there's no trace of the flv file. :(:(:(

Thanks again for your time Motoma.

[kigoobe]

Just for an update ... don't know what the problem is, yet, but as I see, when I tried to work from SSH, I got an error telling

myMovieName.avi: Unknown format

Strange, as .avi is not an unknown format for ffmpeg.

Is it possible that the ffmpeg installation was not done properly, and is there a way to check if the installation was properly done?

Thanks again.

[Motoma]

Just for an update ... don't know what the problem is, yet, but as I see, when I tried to work from SSH, I got an error telling

myMovieName.avi: Unknown format

Strange, as .avi is not an unknown format for ffmpeg.

Is it possible that the ffmpeg installation was not done properly, and is there a way to check if the installation was properly done?

Thanks again.

From the documentation:

ffmpeg -formats

[kigoobe]

Hi Motoma, you are right. I don't see .avi in the list, following the command that you advised. Strange, I thought that avi was one of the allowed formats ... or may be my hosts didn't install some common codecs, or something like that ...