ImageMagick and FFMpeg

From ResourceSpace Documentation Wiki

Configuring ImageMagick support will add automatic thumbnail creation for many more file types in addition to the standard JPEG, GIF and PNG support. Ghostscript will further add thumbnail support for multipage PDF, EPS and more. Configuring FFMpeg support will add automatic thumbnail creation for many video file formats.

ExifTool will add advanced metadata manipulation on many image, audio and video files. ExifTool supports many different types of metadata including EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP and ID3, as well as the maker notes of many digital cameras by Canon, Casio, FujiFilm, HP, JVC/Victor, Kodak, Leaf, Minolta/Konica-Minolta, Nikon, Olympus/Epson, Panasonic/Leica, Pentax/Asahi, Ricoh, Sanyo, Sigma/Foveon and Sony.

ImageMagick can be installed on most Linux systems by installing the "imagemagick" and "ghostscript" packages using the appropriate package managment tools. On Debian based Linux systems (including Ubuntu) you can install packages using:

apt-get install imagemagick
apt-get install ghostscript
apt-get install ffmpeg
apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl (Experimental)

Sometimes the package has a different name - try 'apt-cache search ghostscript' to search for a matching package.

Once installed, simply set the paths to "convert" (for imagemagik) and "gs" (for ghostscript) in config.php. You may need to use the "locate" utility to find these binaries. ('whereis convert' and 'whereis gs')

Note that for ImageMagick, '/bin' is automatically added the path, as historically the ImageMagick path is set to the base of the ImageMagick install. So if the path is '/usr/bin' then enter '/usr'.

On Mac OS X, first install Fink which includes the Debian APT installer, then run the above apt-get commands. The paths to set in config.php are "/sw/bin".

If ffmpeg is not available as a package (as is often the case) it can be downloaded and compiled from source. On Mac OS X, the FFMpegX application contains an ffmpeg binary, so simply install FFMpegX then set the following in config.php:

$ffmpeg_path="/Applications/ffmpegX.app/Contents/Resources"; 

The complete settings for OS X when using Fink and FFMpegX are therefore:

$imagemagick_path="/sw";
$ghostscript_path="/sw/bin";
$ffmpeg_path="/Applications/ffmpegX.app/Contents/Resources";

The complete path settings for imagemagick, ghostscript, ffmpeg and exiftool on Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04 (and possibly others) are:

$imagemagick_path="/usr/bin";
$ghostscript_path="/usr/bin";
$ffmpeg_path="/usr/bin";
$exiftool_path="/usr/bin"; 

Only add the last line for experimental use of exiftool - used to manipulate resource metadata. This function is only available from subversion/svn rev. 225. After setting correct paths, remember to check installation using Team Centre -> Installation Check.