Run external program in background

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
Another possible solution may be to run a PHP script using exec(). For example php -f myfile.php, which can run pretty much in an infinite loop (as long as there are files to encode). You can use a file, or a database to store the number of processes going on, and a file queue so your calling script will execute the encoding script, and it will either start encoding if there aren't many others being encoded, or it can wait in a queue until you have the resources to do it.

It's a very simplistic idea, but unfortunately it's the best a mind as inferior as mine can come up with (for now, anyway).

I've searched online for a solution, and I've found others emulating multi-thread applications, but they all seem to have serious flaws or limits.