Question

I created a video transcoder using ffmpeg. User uploads RAW videos – very big, about 20GB – via FTP.

Currently, a php script is monitoring local paths every 5 seconds with below strategy.

1. Look up local filesystem.
2. If a ‘new’ file appears, add it to database with modified time and its size.
3. After 5 seconds, check the modified time and size again,
   1. Not changed : Set status as [DONE], and encode the video into ‘./output’ directory. ( ‘output’ is explicitly excluded from monitoring )
   2. Changed : Wait another 5 seconds.

It works very well, but it burns some cpu power to find ‘new file’. Is there any way to get the ‘exact timing’ when file uploading is being completed?

Answer 1

if you can, install inotify then its super easy via a bash script. otherwise a bash script may still be more efficient.

update: php supports inotify with: php.net/manual/en/book.inotify.php