How To: Install FFMPEG and FFMPEG-PHP

I was randomly browsing the internet and reading about making a website look better and I encountered ffmpeg-php. ffmpeg is a very powerful tool to record, convert and stream audio and video. Its a very rich tool almost supporting every format out there in the world. It can convert any format to any other format provided the codec. ffmpeg-php is an extension for PHP that provides a rich library to access info about audio and video files. The good thing about ffmpeg-php is that it can retrieve all info about any audio/video file subjected to the condition that the particular audio/video format is supported by your ffmpeg installation. So, now you have a clear idea that you can do wonders with audio/videos while showing them on your site 🙂

I tried some of the functionalities and they worked out of the box. Here’s is complete how to on installing ffmpeg and ffmpeg-php.

FFMPEG:

I tried installing ffmpeg from rpms provided by several Fedora repositories but after installation ffmpeg doesn’t seem to work. After several tries, I installed ffmpeg from source rpms and it worked. Below, I will describe how to install ffmpeg from source rpm.

Step 1:

Make sure that you have ‘rpmbuild’ installed by issuing

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -q rpmbuild [Enter]

command. If the above says that rpmbuild is not installed, then install it using yum as given below

[root@bordeaux saini]# yum install rpmbuild [Enter] (do as root)

Step 2:

Download the latest src rpm of ffmpeg from rpmfind.net. Issue the command given below

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -hiv ffmpeg-x.x.x.xx-xxx.src.rpm [Enter] (do as root)

Step 3:

Go to ‘/usr/src/redhat/SPECS/’ directory and issue the command given below

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[root@bordeaux saini]# cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ [Enter]
[root@bordeaux SPECS]# rpmbuild -ba ffmpeg.spec [Enter] (do as root)

If it gives an error like package ‘xyz’ is need by ffmpeg. Then install the package ‘xyz’ using yum as

[root@bordeaux SPECS]# yum install xyz [Enter] (do as root)

After installing the dependencies, issue the rpmbuild command ‘rpmbuild -ba ffmpeg.spec’. Now ffmpeg rpms will be build and they will be stored in ‘/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/’.

Step 4:

Go the ‘/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/’ (x86_64 instead of i386 if your OS is 64 bit). Install all the rpms that were built by rpmbuild.

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -hiv *.rpm [Enter] (do as root)

Thats it. ffmpeg is now successfully installed on your computer. Half the job is done. Now lets proceed with ffmpeg-php installation.

FFMPEG-PHP:

We will install ffmpeg-php from source bundle.

Step 1:

Make sure that ‘php-devel’ installed on your machine by issuing

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -q php-devel [Enter]

command. If the above command says the ‘php-devel’ is not installed, then install it using the following command.

[root@bordeaux saini]# yum install php-devel [Enter] (do as root)

Step 2:

Download the latest version of ffmpeg-php from here. Unpack the file you have downloaded.

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[root@bordeaux saini]# bunzip2 -d ffmpeg-php-0.5.1.tbz2 [Enter]
[root@bordeaux saini]# tar -xvf ffmpeg-php-0.5.1.tar [Enter]

Step 3:

Issue the following command in sequence if everything goes fine.

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[root@bordeaux saini]# cd ffmpeg-php-0.5.1 [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# phpize [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# ./configure [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# make [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# make install [Enter] (do as root)

Step 4:

Open ‘/etc/php.ini’ and add a line ‘extension=ffmpeg.so’ in the category ‘Dynamic Extensions’. For help see the image below.
FFMPEG PHP PHPini Module

Step 5:

Restart apache web server aka ‘httpd’ service by issuing the command.

[root@bordeaux saini]# service httpd restart [Enter] (do as root)

Step 6:

Write a test php file and test your ffmpeg-php installation.

phpinfo();

Save the above code in ‘info.php’ and save the file in ‘/var/www/html/’ and browse http://localhost/info.php . If you see something like this.
FFMPEG PHP Linux
Then the ffmpeg-php is successfully installed on your machine. Now you can jump into the world of video manipulation via your website.

 

How To: Install PHP-Ming

Yesterday, I came across a library called ming for php which can do wonders while converting videos to .swf (flash), images to .swf and much more. The best thing is that ming provides wrappers in C/C++/PHP/Python/Perl/Tcl etc. So, can be used within any one of these languages. But, the damn thing drove me crazy while installing. It was very tough experience installing it as the available howtos didn’t help much. But finally I somehow managed with the installation and it worked 🙂 So, I thought of writing this how to, so that anyone having the same problem can find it helpful.

Here is a complete howto on installing php-ming in Fedora. (I installed it on Fedora 7 and with php5, but howto is supposed to work with other versions as well.) Though there are rpms available for earlier versions of ming, but I wanted the latest, so installed from source.

Resources:
libming : http://www.libming.net/
PHP : http://php.net/

Step 1

First of all make sure that you have php-devel package, otherwise you will not be able to install ming at all. Do the following as root.

[root@bordeaux root]# rpm -q php-devel [Enter]

If the above command says php-devel is not installed, then fetch php-devel for your php version from here and install as given below, else proceed to step 2.

[root@bordeaux root]# rpm -hiv php-devel-5.2.2-3.i386.rpm [Enter]

Step 2

Download latest version of ming from here.

Step 3

Untar the downloaded package.

[saini@bordeaux saini]# tar -xvzf ming-0.4.0.beta5.tar.gz [Enter]

Step 4

Change directory to ‘./ming-0.4.0.beta5’ and issue ./configure and make as given below

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[saini@bordeaux saini]# cd ming-0.4.0.beta5 [Enter]
[saini@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# ./configure --enable-cXX --enable-php [Enter]
[saini@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# make [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# make install [Enter] (as root)

Step 5

Go to ‘./php_ext’ directory and issue ‘make’ and ‘make install’.

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[saini@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# cd php_ext [Enter]
[saini@bordeaux php_ext]# make [Enter]
[root@bordeaux php_ext]# make install [Enter] (as root)

Step 6

Open make_modules.sh in your favorite editor and uncomment the line ‘make install’ and run make_modules.sh.

[root@bordeaux php_ext]# bash make_modules.sh [Enter] (as root)

Step 7

Go to ‘./tmp/modules/’ directory and copy ming.so to ‘/usr/lib/php/modules/’

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[root@bordeaux php_ext]# cd tmp/modules/ [Enter]
[root@bordeaux modules]# cp ming.so /usr/lib/php/modules/ [Enter] (as root)

If ming.so is not found in ‘php_ext/tmp/modules/, then update your db using ‘updatedb’ and locate ming.so and if found on locate, then copy it to ‘/usr/lib/php/modules/’. If not found at all, try recompiling or issue some random commands related to make.

Step 8

Go to ‘/usr/local/lib/’ and check if libming.so, libming.so.0 etc. are present there. If yes proceed else I don’t know what to do 🙁

Step 9(a)

Go to ‘/usr/lib/php/modules/’ and issue these commands.

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[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so libming.so (as root)
[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0 libming.so.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.3.0 libming.so.0.3.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.4.0 libming.so.0.4.0 (as root)

Step 9(b)

Go to ‘/usr/lib/’ and issue these commands.

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[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so libming.so (as root)
[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0 libming.so.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.3.0 libming.so.0.3.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.4.0 libming.so.0.4.0 (as root)

Step 10

Restart the httpd service by issuing the command below

[root@bordeaux root]# service httpd restart [Enter] (as root)

Step 11

Write a file ‘/var/www/html/info.php’ with following contents

phpinfo();

and point your web browser to http://localhost/info.php . Now search for ‘ming’ and check whether its enabled or not.

PHP Ming in Fedora

If enabled, yes you have successfully installed php-ming 🙂 Hope this helps.

 

Bug: Strange libstdc++.so.5 Problem in Fedora 7

After installing jdk-6u2 for Linux from Sun Microsystems’ site, when I ran javaws it gave strange error that libstdc++.so.5 not found and it aborted. I searched for libstdc++.so.5 and it was not there in /usr/lib/ as expected. That implied something is wrong. As I installed jdk-6u2 from rpms, it should have given dependency error for the particular library, bit it didn’t. After searching for sometime I found that libstdc++.so.5 is provided by compat-libstdc++-33 package, which was not installed on my system. After I installing the particular package, everything worked fine.

It worked fine for Fedora Core 6 because compat-libstdc++-33 is provided by default in Fedora Core 6.

But its kind of strange that if libstdc++.so.5 and hence compat-libstdc++-33 is required for jdk-6u2 then why ‘rpm -ivh’ didn’t give dependency error.