Site crashes when uploading a video

[westonruter]

From a support forum topic for Image Placeholders:

My server runs on an AMD Athlon 3000G CPU with 6GB of RAM. It is not a high-performance server, but it is not extremely low-end either. However, after installing the Image Placeholders plugin, my site crashes whenever I upload a video.

After investigating, I found that ffmpeg runs during video uploads, consuming all available resources. I later discovered that this happens because the plugin tries to analyze the dominant color of the video.

I can understand extracting a dominant color from images, but doing so for videos seems unnecessary and unwanted. Moreover, this behavior is not clearly documented, making it difficult to identify the cause of the issue.

I would appreciate it if you could improve this.
The best solution, in my opinion, would be for the plugin to ignore video files entirely.
If that is not feasible, please consider adding an option to disable this feature in the settings.

Thank you for your consideration.

[kartikmehta8]

Hi, I'm a bit new to the performance plugin but I would like to work on this.

cc: @westonruter @sarthak-19

[sarthak-19]

Hi @kartikmehta8 welcome to the wp-performance community.
Please feel free to reach out in case you have any query regarding the contribution.

[kartikmehta8]

Hi @westonruter!

• I am thinking of adding a settings field where a user can check/uncheck if they want to process the videos as well or not.
• Another approach I am thinking of is giving a field where the user can input the extensions they want to ignore and don't want to process.
• Or, if we don't want a settings field, then the only way is to hardcode and ignore the videos in the code itself.

What do you think? I feel approaches 1 and 2 are a bit cleaner and should be implemented. Do let me know your thoughts.

[westonruter]

Hello!

• Or, if we don't want a settings field, then the only way is to hardcode and ignore the videos in the code itself.

I think this is the right approach. I'm not clear on how our plugin is responsible here in the first place, but if we're somehow calling ffmpeg as part of the image conversion process, we definitely shouldn't be doing this when a video is uploaded.

cc @adamsilverstein