Hi, I'm fairly new to the Quicktime and it's API, and was wondering if
it's possible to control quicktime from the command line?
Specifically, I'd like to be able to go to a certain frame of a movie
and export it as a JPG with a certain name.
It's a actually for a web interface but I don't believe it's possible
to do any of that via PHP, but I could execute a command line
procedure in the same way I control QTSS.
Any thoughts or pointers would really be appreciated.
It really depends on the .mov format you're working with - there are
many Linux-based projects that have developed decoders for specific
subsets of Quicktime (primarily for playback support of common .mov
formats) and these tools can typically be operated via the command
line... I'm thinking VLC, ffmpeg and mplayer first and foremost. There
is, also, I think a similarly limited (but useful) Quicktime library
for PHP you might want to check out, though it's probably just based on
the same work of one of those other tools.
If you want actual Quicktime library support from PHP, and have an OSX
server available to run your Web app from, then qt_tools is an option
too... this is a command line tool built using the Apple Quicktime
APIs, so it should work with anything Quicktime supports (I use it all
the time). There may be limitations I'm not familiar with if using in a
Web app - for instance, maybe it requires a loginwindow (GUI) session,
so your server would have to be logged in for the tool to work (just
guessing, this may not be true at all!).
And then yeah, if all else fails you could always build your own
command line tool (or PHP module) linked against the Quicktime
libraries, just as the qt_tools author did.
