FFmpeg Integration or Native PHP Extension for Media Processing

[gavriel-adi]

Many modern PHP applications (news platforms, social apps, media galleries) rely heavily on server-side media processing, especially for video and audio. Currently, most projects depend on system calls to ffmpeg, often using exec() or similar, which is fragile, platform-dependent, and security-sensitive.

Proposal: Introduce native support for common media-processing tasks in PHP — either by integrating a simplified subset of FFmpeg as an official extension, or by defining a standardized FFI/extension wrapper that is easy to install and use across environments.

Key features:

Generate video thumbnails

Transcode audio/video formats

Extract metadata (duration, resolution, codecs)

Normalize audio or trim videos

Benefits:

Removes the need for shell access and external binaries

Safer, more portable, and performance-optimized

Enhances use cases for CMSs, video platforms, and audio podcast tools written in PHP

Easier for shared hosting or restricted environments

Would love to see this as part of the broader effort to modernize PHP's media capabilities.

[pronskiy]

@gavriel-adi, afaik, many php develoeprs rely on https://github.com/PHP-FFMpeg/PHP-FFMpeg and it solves the tasks in most cases.
I'm not sure what would be the benefits to have FFI/extension for this?

[gavriel-adi]

True, but as I mentioned, PHP-FFMpeg requires a separate installation of FFMpeg, which also complicates the fact that this basic thing is there, and even in shared storage and other companies it is impossible to do external installations of FFMpeg, so I think that integrating it into the language like ImageMagick or GD would be complementary to everything that is needed today for media management of video, audio and images.

[dstogov]

Video processing is a heavy task (it may take a while). It shouldn't be done in context of PHP HTTP request, but should be offloaded. This may be done using commercial products (like "Zend Job Queue") or "manually" implementing similar solution.

[gavriel-adi]

We would greatly appreciate a native built-in solution within PHP itself, as only then can we enable everyday users to create websites that handle such media processing tasks efficiently and seamlessly, without performance issues or delays. This would make advanced features accessible to all without complex external setups.