I am looking to start a website which will need to convert any audio file to a low quality wav pcm file. So far I have found the possibilities to use ffmpeg or an external converter (like http://www.online-convert.com). Both of them have their drawbacks:
- ffmpeg is not supported by most hosting companies, due to the cpu load (although it would be minimal probably in this case). I am not looking for a dedicated server, since I want to keep the cost for hosting as low as possible.
- dependency on an external party is not optimal.
My question to you people is whether you see any other possibilities to solve this issue (preferably within a PHP environment). Thanks!
There’s no way you could accomplish this on a (correctly configured) LAMP hosting service alone. You need to either control external programs (like your ffmpeg example) or send the file somewhere else and get it back converted.
So you should try looking for something different, either a full linux system (dedicated server, virtual server, chroot, whatever) or some LAMP hosting with access to external commands and/or dedicated file conversion services.