[dundee] ffmpeg and PHP FTP functions

[chris wyllie]

Hey, it was said that I should mail this problem round the list for help at
the last meeting. I've come across a couple of problems in a piece of web
development I've undertaken.


It's kinda like a youtube clone in that I need to upload large videos,
create previews of them by converting, watermark them to keep copyright and
create a thumbnail.

ffmpeg was suggested and evidently it's a widely used option for this kind
of task. The problem is that the hosting plan which has been bought
already(out of my control) have pulled the plug on ffmpeg support as it's a
shared environment and was causing resource issues.

So what I was wondering was, can someone suggest something that would
perform those three jobs(convert, watermark, thumb) - preferably in one
package - which could be installed? Or perhaps is there any way to create a
'stand-alone' ffmpeg program that could be hosted and called from our
document root? I don't know about that, doubting the possibility and it
probably breaches some term agreement anyway...

Secondly, the upload of very large video files(a few hundred megs) would
have to be handled through a web interface and the brief stipulates using
FTP. Would this be possible using PHP's inbuilt FTP functions or would it
die before it got close? So far I've had problems getting even a simple PHP
FTP upload of a text file to work although I don't think the problem is with
the FTP login, it doesn't produce an error, rather that it's something to do
with how I'm specifying the local file. If PHP is a viable option, could
somebody kindly explain how I would be able to use a file input browse
button to upload a file using the FTP connection? I tried givint the fput
function the $_FILES's name variable as the local path but it doesn't like
that. I don't understand, sorry for the ignorance.

Again, if PHP FTP isn't a good option, can someone suggest any alternative
for handling large uploads through the browser using FTP?

Phew, if anybody has bothered to trawl through this babble whinging about my
project's woes then i am truly grateful and would become ecstatic should
anyone be able to provide some help. Even pointing in the right direction
would be of use as I'm a bit lost just now.

Many many thanks and thanks in advance,

Chris

<3 the penguins =P
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