FFmpeg works on terminal not with PHP exec

Question

If I execute a Ffmpeg command from terminal, I get the desired result:

ffmpeg  -i src.mp4 -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 video.flv

Terminal's output:

...
video:3404kB audio:1038kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 2.966904%

And video.flv is created correctly.

Then, if called via PHP exec:

exec("ffmpeg  -i src.mp4 -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 video.flv", $o, $v);
var_dump($o);
var_dump($v);

The output is this:

array(0) { } int(1)

And no file is created. Any thoughts on how to approach this?

I can exec('whoami') with no problems and I have used the FFmpeg full path as well: /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg

Solution 1

The problem is that you use exec instead of shell_exec the point is that environement of exec don't know about any FFmpeg executable, but shell_exec* does, becuase it uses env. of the bash/shell

Ths solution is to use the full path to FFmpeg executable, eg. /usr/bin/ffmpeg

Solution 2

add 2>&1 to the end of the command and it will work:

exec("ffmpeg  -i src.mp4 -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 video.flv 2>&1", $o, $v);

Comments

[Oliver Salzburg]

Maybe exec() only captures stdout in output, not stderr.

[slhck]

FFmpeg produces very weird output — you have to redirect both stdout and stderr to get everything AFAIK.

[slhck]

No, the user said they tried /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg as well.

[Rodislav Moldovan]

we had same issue half year ago, solution, described above, solved the problem, what about "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg", maybe - bin folder is not correct !?..

[Rishiraj Purohit]

exec with full path /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg worked for me, i found the path using which ffmpeg