FFmpeg: batch converting several videos all to avi and generating thumbnails

[Guest kilbad]

I want to setup a system on my website that deals with videos like I have created for my photo gallery..

 

My Photo Gallery

Basically, I use FTP to upload the JPG photos into a directory, and then I used a single script that generates the thumbnails using ImageMagick (via PHP system commands), and then displays those photos in the gallery.  So this whole process is very simple for me, basically I upload and I'm done!

 

My Video Gallery:: What I want..

Currently, I upload videos (which may be any format, .mov, .avi, .mpeg, etc, because I get them from different cameras/phones), and then convert them individually using FFmpeg via SSH using PuTTY.  Then, I also generate thumbnails for those videos using FFmpeg again, with syntax like this::

 

ffmpeg -1 /some/video/test.avi -y -ss 1 -t 0.01 -f mjpeg /that/videos/thumbnail.jpg

 

My question is this:: Is there a way to batch convert many different videos, of possibly different formats, with FFmpeg, all to AVI, and then batch create thumbnails for each of those videos?

 

Thank you all so much for the help!

 

Brendan

[steviewdr]

Here is a thread for converting flv's off you-tube etc. to avi's and resizing them:

 

http://blog.moybella.net/2007/04/14/grabbing-flash-video-from-youtube/

 

-steve