FFMPEG Quality & Thumbnail: PHP

FFMPEG Quality & Thumbnail

Hi Guys,

I have a 2 part question.

#1. I have a script that works fine to convert uploaded video to an flv file using ffmpeg but the quality isn't great. I have tried increasing the bitrate from the default of 200kb/s to 700kb/s which seems to make the converted video much worse. What options should i use to get a better quality video output?

Here is the line of code im using:
$output = exec ("ffmpeg -i source.ext -s qvga -ab 128 -y output.flv);

#2. I have another line of code that then creates a thumbnail from the converted video but what i would like is the code to take a thumbnail from the central location of the video rather than just the start. How would i do that without knowing the length of the video to divide it?

Here is the current thumbnail code:
$output2 = exec ("ffmpeg -y -i output.flv -r 3.0 -sameq -f image2 -an output.jpg");

Thanks.

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Hi,

The code below should seek to the middle of the file an output a JPEG. I have tested this and it does work. Somethings to be aware of are that the function for getting the FLV duration I got from this forum: http://flixforums.com/archive/index.php/t-149.html and on it its says that depending on the file size the function could take a while, so the thumbnail should only be produced once, after the file has been uploaded.

Also the -ss command for ffmpeg moves the position in the file to the second that is passed. Some builds of ffmpeg seem to have an issue with -ss, but it wokred fine on mine so you will just have to try it and see.

<?php
	function GetFLVDuration($file){
		// get contents of a file into a string
		if(file_exists($file)){
			$handle = fopen($file, "r");
			$contents = fread($handle, filesize($file));
			fclose($handle);
		
			if(strlen($contents) > 3){
				if(substr($contents,0 , 3) == "FLV"){
					$taglen = hexdec(bin2hex(substr($contents, strlen($contents)-3)));
					if(strlen($contents) > $taglen){
						$duration = hexdec(bin2hex(substr($contents, strlen($contents) - $taglen, 3)));
						return $duration;
					}
				}
			}
		}
		return 0;
	}
	
	// get duration and divide by 2 to get middle
	$duration = number_format((GetFLVDuration('output.flv') / 1000) / 2);
	
	// check for error
	if($duration<0){
		$duration = 0;
	}
	
	//save out thumbnail
	$output2 = exec('ffmpeg -y -i output.flv -r 1 -vframes 1 -sameq -f image2 -ss ' . $duration . ' -an output.jpg');
?>

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FFMPEG Quality & Thumbnail

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