How does Google do it?

[unknowngiver]

Hey
I have seen it in action at Google video, YouTube and alot of other websiteS: I am talking about the ability to Generate Screenshots of the video using PHP.
I am opening a Video site...nothing like youtube or google video...its a humour video section and i dont want to have to take the screenshot of every video and post it manually..i was wondering if there is a tutorial or guide on that...
Thanks

 

[mch]

I'm sure that the script calls an external program to do that.

 

[Peter]

yes there is no way for php to do this itself.

They will be using php/asp or whatever to call to an external script that takes a screen grab of the video. The same is done by the likes of alexa and google when they show a screen shot of a webpage.

 

[unknowngiver]

oh okay..that sux i thought it could be done using PHP

 

[unknowngiver]

what abt YouTube Clones..anyone using that script and know how its doing it???

 

[lee101]

there is a php script that i have seen before that can extract iondividual frames form mpeg movies, i can't remember the URL but i tihnk it is called mpeg2php, or something along those lines, i think that would do what you are looking for

 

[monaco]

Google Video and YouTube both make use of the flash video format...not mpeg. There might be a simple way to do this given that piece of info.

 

[-PS-]

i've just written a script myself that does that (make thumbnails of movies) the only way i could find to do it, was to use one of the programs on the os to generate the thumbnail. but on any system with safemode enabled that'd be out of the question, but yourtube and google video wouldn't be worring about that thou ..

 

[unknowngiver]

Hm i think this is what does it :
http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/
i saw the Youtube clone sale page and thats what it said..and i went to that site and read the stuff there and it looks like its the right tool :D

 

[NeeJam]

it cant be done off php you need an external script to do it, you could get a youtube clone site script and grab the code off it :p

 

[unknowngiver]

http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/ this does it! :D

 

[Peter]

and if you read the requirements unknowngiver you will see that it needs:-

ffmpeg-0.4.9_pre1 (chances are you dont have this and have no permission to install it)
php-4.3.0 (you should have this, at least I hope so)
gd-2.0 (ussually installed)

As you can see it relies on a couple of extensions, gd is ussually on servers but
ffmpeg-0.4.9_pre1 is certainly not. And unless you have root access on a server you will have no way to install it.

 

[-PS-]

<SNIP>
As you can see it relies on a couple of extensions, gd is ussually on servers but
ffmpeg-0.4.9_pre1 is certainly not. And unless you have root access on a server you will have no way to install it.

yes totaly agree, i only was able to install it, along with dozens of codec's was because i am the admin of the server the site is on. no way in hell any decent hosting company would give you access to stuff like that - if they did - wouldn't expect them to be around for to long....

 

[unknowngiver]

you can alwayz request them to install it...or look for a host that has it installed

 

[tutzking]

Googles amazing thats all i can say.