Generate preview image from Video file?

Question

Is there a way in PHP given a video file (.mov, .mp4) to generate a thumbnail image preview?

Answer 1

Solution #1 (Older) (not recommended)

Firstly install ffmpeg-php project (http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/)

And then you can use of this simple code:

<?php
$frame = 10;
$movie = 'test.mp4';
$thumbnail = 'thumbnail.png';

$mov = new ffmpeg_movie($movie);
$frame = $mov->getFrame($frame);
if ($frame) {
    $gd_image = $frame->toGDImage();
    if ($gd_image) {
        imagepng($gd_image, $thumbnail);
        imagedestroy($gd_image);
        echo '<img src="'.$thumbnail.'">';
    }
}
?>

Description: This project use binary extension .so file, It's very old and last update was for 2008. So, maybe don't works with newer version of FFMpeg or PHP.

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Solution #2 (Update 2018) (recommended)

Firstly install PHP-FFMpeg project (https://github.com/PHP-FFMpeg/PHP-FFMpeg)
(just run for install: composer require php-ffmpeg/php-ffmpeg)

And then you can use of this simple code:

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';

$sec = 10;
$movie = 'test.mp4';
$thumbnail = 'thumbnail.png';

$ffmpeg = FFMpeg\FFMpeg::create();
$video = $ffmpeg->open($movie);
$frame = $video->frame(FFMpeg\Coordinate\TimeCode::fromSeconds($sec));
$frame->save($thumbnail);
echo '<img src="'.$thumbnail.'">';

Description: It's newer and more modern project and works with latest version of FFMpeg and PHP. Note that it's required to proc_open() PHP function.