CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpffmpegshellexecute
wantTheBest
wantTheBest

Reputation: 1720

need to exec() ffmpeg on shared hosting, 1and1 hosting

and I've read a bunch of related posts here on SO and have gotten the following ideas here:

First, my website is shared-hosted at 1and1.com. And my objective is to call exec() in my PHP code to run ffmpeg to convert short videos (30 seconds) from format A to format B.

1) Now, because of my shared hosting situation (the 1and1 web server my website runs on is shared with other 1and1 customers) -- 1and1's administrator probably has their server in 'safe' mode, so that my desire to exec() in PHP to do the ffmpeg conversion of a video -- will fail. (Supposedly there is a 'safe mode' shared directory but that's a hoop to jump through with 1and1).

2) And even if 1and1 does not mind if, from my PHP code, I call 'exec( ffmpeg -i yada yada)' for converting between video formats -- I've heard it's unseemly to do that. I'm led to believe I need a dedicated server and not a shared server. Which sounds weird because (a) the web site will never scale to massive # of users, and (b) when I run ffmpeg on my 2 1/2 year-old laptop, Windows Vista, running Xampp as my localhost development web server, the conversion happens like right now. Very fast.

Are the above restrictions correct ('safe mode' on shared web hosting, running ffmpeg is a no-no without a dedicated box)? I'd like to think that 1and1 would not even notice if my web site did a few (say, under 20) short-video conversions per day.

Also if anyone can recommend the proper web hosting company for my situation I would be in your debt. Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3258

Answers (1)

Colum
Colum

Reputation: 3914

I believe safe mode would allow you to use exec because 1and1 would have you chrooted so any program you run would not be able to access other users. But, you might want to check the AUP to see if the prevent those kind of processes (that consume a lot of resources).

For the best performance you should use a VPS server in which you can control your php environment. ffmpeg has potential to be very resource intensive, so for best performance a VPS/dedicated would be best. Also, using ffmpeg on shared hosting would impact performance on other sites as well.

Any VPS would do, but because you asked for a recommendation, I would recommend BlueMileCloud.

PS: You should never call a process directly from exec. You should add it to a queue, so the script does not wait for the process to finish and cause the site to hang.

Upvotes: 3

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