Question

OS: ubuntu 11.10
Webserver: Apache
Code: PHP
I am trying to display the output of command “ffmpeg -i ” on the webpage using php.
Required: The webpage should show the information about video (text).
Whats happening: The webpage shows no text output on running the php code.
If I was however doing system(“ls”) the code runs fine and outputs the list of files.
Here’s my code

<?php
 echo "Details of video file:";
 system('ffmpeg -i /home/atish/Videos/T2V0040006_Angled_ride_720x576i_FLDCMB.avi');
?>

The same command works fine on my shell, and my system has ffmpeg installed. Here’s a snapshot of executing this command directly on shell:

ThinkPad-T420:~/Videos$ ffmpeg -i /home/xx/Videos/T2V0040006_Angled_ride_720x576i_FLDCMB.avi
ffmpeg version git-2012-01-10-7e2ba2d Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jan 10 2012 12:01:19 with gcc 4.6.1
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-    amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab
  libavutil      51. 34.100 / 51. 34.100
  libavcodec     53. 54.100 / 53. 54.100
  libavformat    53. 29.100 / 53. 29.100
  libavdevice    53.  4.100 / 53.  4.100
  libavfilter     2. 58.100 /  2. 58.100
  libswscale      2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100
  libswresample   0.  6.100 /  0.  6.100
  libpostproc    51.  2.100 / 51.  2.100
  Input #0, avi, from '/home/atish/Videos/T2V0040006_Angled_ride_720x576i_FLDCMB.avi':
  Metadata:
  encoder         : Lavf52.23.1
  Duration: 00:00:29.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 124422 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo (I420 / 0x30323449), yuv420p, 720x576, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
  At least one output file must be specified

I have tried appending “DISPLAY=:0” to my command and also done “xhost +” before running php code, but nothing is helping me out.

Thanks.

Answer 1

This link explains the how and why. Thanks for the replies folks.

This is the way to get the desired output:

echo exec('/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i input.mp4 2>&1', $output);  
var_dump($output);