Installing FFMPEG-PHP on Ubuntu

Here’s how to install it, based on Gutsy.

(Looks like hardy has a package here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/source/hardy/ffmpeg-php)

ffmpeg-php homepage: http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/

API docs: http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/doc/api/

php needs to be the dev build (php5-dev),

and assuming ffmpeg is already installed, install the needed packages:

apt-get install ffmpeg libavformat-dev libavcodev-dev liblame-dev

Then build and install:

phpize5
./configure
make
make install

Register the extension in php — add this at the end of php.ini:

extension=ffmpeg.so

As an example, here’s how to pull 6 thumbnails from a video:

$destination = 'video.avi';
$movie = new ffmpeg_movie($destination);
$total_frames = $movie->getFrameCount();
$per_frame = round($total_frames / 6);
$start_frame = $per_frame / 2;
$count = 0;
for($i = $start_frame; $i < $total_frames; $i = $i + $per_frame) {
  if($count > 5) {
    break;    
  }       
  $frame = $movie->getFrame($i);
  if($frame) {        
    $frame->resize(400, 300);
    $GDimage = $frame``->toGDImage();
    $filename = sprintf("%04d", $count) . '.png';
    imagepng($GDimage, $filename);
    $count++;
  }
}