a looking-glass book

how to pull images from a qt movie with php

for weeks i have been looking for a way to dynamically pull images out of qt movies. i couldnt dump every frame from a 90 minute qt file - i dont care what you say about filesystems, they arent truly designed to handle thousands and thousands of files in a folder.

i have sent out emails, set up meetings and talked to people about solving this particular hurdle. the best response i had gotten thus far was 'you could use java wrapped in python called from php'. i was to have a meeting on tues about getting this written.

and then, the clouds parted. the new year began with a bang.

it turns out there has been written (as i felt there must have been but i couldnt find it) an extension to php that allows you to pull images out of movie files dynamically on the fly.

i havent installed this on my server yet to play. but from reading the docs it sounds like itll do exactly what i want. bam!

so if you want to pull out images, frame captures or stills from a movie file for the web, on the fly and dynamically, ffmpeg-php might just be the thing you need.

big big thanks to kevin and meg for pointing me to this. (im amazed at how i havent met kevin yet still, but we manage to pick brains over web stuff coast-to-coast every 6 months or so. this time he really came through. big ups.)

expect a more complete review soon. (along with news of my other developments. i just couldnt wait to get this up and online.)