Conversion script

Question

Hello I am wondering what processes involves converting files online...What programming languages are required?Basically I am wondering how are the files on scribd,issu,slideshare converted... Thank you..!

Answer 1

There is a media processing library called FFMpeg. It will read, write and convert pretty much any common media format. It can resize, crop, scale, resample, etc all the files it can load, meaning videos can be shrunk in size, or whatever you might want to do!

The great thing is, if you have PHP and FFMpeg installed on a server, you can use PHP's exec() command to convert/modify/save videos.

A little note: beware of using exec() with any commands that are influence by what is sent from the server, like frame sizes, etc - hackers can latch onto them and mess your server up!

To get round the problem of pethetic people (script kiddies, etc), try ffmpeg-php. I don't know how popular this is on web hosts, but I haven't seen it many places in the wild.

James

EDIT

Unfortunately not. FFMpeg is primarily for video/audio conversion. However, there is a program called pdf2swf that should do the trick. The man page for it is here.

The only concern about pdf2swf is whether your web host actually has it installed on their server. If you have a VPN or a dedicated server, that's no problem, but if you're on shared hosting, and have no access to the root filesystem, this is where issues arise - you can't install pdf2swf if you don't have it.