Does someone know if it's even possible (in PHP) to take a frame/thumbnail from a quicktime movie on the server?
Something like the usual GD thumbnail generation, but for .mov files.
note: I'm using dreamhost, so I don't have more than web-panel access to the server.
Dreamhost provides a shared ffmpeg binary in /usr/bin/ffmpeg, so you should definitely be able to call ffmpeg from php by using the system() or shell_exec() functions. The Dreamhost wiki has also an entry providing directions on how to install and configure ffmpeg-php..