How can I use ffmpeg with PHP's exec( ) command?

Question

I'm running Max OS 10.7, MAMP (PHP 5.3.6), with FFMPEG installed. I want to convert videos from one format to another. The following entered into Terminal works fine:

 ffmpeg -i /path/video.wmv /path/video.flv

The file video.wmv is converted to video.flv. Great! Now, this PHP line DOESN'T work:

 exec('ffmpeg -i /path/video.wmv /path/video.flv');

Why? I've spent many hours reading up on this and I still can't figure out what is wrong. I have read the other discussions on this topic and there is no clear answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated! (PHP safe_mode is off).

Check your error.log, make sure the binary is in the path, or add 2>&1 to receive some details on your wrongdoings. — mario
– mario, Commented Jan 22, 2012 at 19:34
This is propably a problem with permissions. The user which PHP or Apache is using doesn't have the permissions to access/write to the destinations. — Repox
– Repox, Commented Jan 22, 2012 at 19:35
File permissions are wide open. It seems like there are lots of people that have the same issue. I would expect that any command that I can enter into terminal can be used as an argument to exec(). Clearly, this isn't the case. — John Anderson
– John Anderson, Commented Jan 22, 2012 at 20:39
@JohnAnderson: The shell exec is running in might not be the same shell of your terminal, so you can't expect that out of the box. — hakre
– hakre, Commented Jan 27, 2012 at 15:48

DiglettPotato · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-22 19:35:54Z

7

I would double check that the path to ffmpeg is correct. Also, take a look at the output to see if has anything useful, like this:

exec("/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i $srcFile $destFile 2>&1", $output);
var_dump($output);

answered Jan 22, 2012 at 19:35

DiglettPotato

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