Intership @ Sympl Week 7
First BIG Project
Mon 20 - Fri 25 March:
Automating Video Ad Creation Intro
This week, I was tasked with finding a way to automate the process of creating video ads for our customers. Previously, video ads were made by external video editors, but we wanted to streamline the process and enable customers to generate their own videos using code alone. In the following blog posts, I will share my journey in achieving this goal.
Understanding the Problem
Before diving into the solution, it was crucial to understand the problem and the requirements. I had a meeting with my mentor, who explained the current process and the desired outcome. We needed a solution that would:
- Allow customers to generate video ads without involving third parties
- Be customizable according to the customers' preferences
- Be easy to use and integrate with our existing platform
Researching Existing Solutions
With a clear understanding of the problem, I began researching possible solutions. I explored several video editing libraries and APIs that could be used to create a video generation tool. After evaluating several options, I stumbled upon FFmpeg, a widely-used video processing library, in combination with PHP to create a customizable and efficient video generation service.
What is FFmpeg?
As mentioned before, I decided to try to use FFmpeg. FFmpeg is an open-source software project consisting of a vast suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. It is widely used for various tasks, including video transcoding, format conversion, basic editing, and streaming. FFmpeg is highly extensible and customizable, making it an ideal choice for a wide range of multimedia processing tasks.