Are there any best practices for efficiently generating preview images from videos using PHP?

When generating preview images from videos using PHP, it is important to use a library or tool that can efficiently extract frames from the video files. One common approach is to use FFmpeg, a powerful multimedia framework that can handle various video formats and operations. By utilizing FFmpeg in PHP code, you can extract frames at specific timestamps to generate preview images effectively.

// Path to the video file
$videoPath = 'path/to/video.mp4';

// Path to save the preview image
$previewImagePath = 'path/to/preview.jpg';

// Execute FFmpeg command to extract a frame at 5 seconds into the video
exec("ffmpeg -i $videoPath -ss 5 -vframes 1 $previewImagePath");