I have a client that wants to use some console functionality from Mplayer. The server is RHE with cPanel Release. Does anyone run this combination? Are there any inherent security risks? conflicts. Even in console mode, the installation requires a bunch of X86 stuff along with SDL and some other things that are clearly GUI game-oriented. Has anyone developed a stripped down installation that doesn't have all the superfluous crap?

Anything with mplayer is likely to be processor, and memory intensive. Sounds like he wants to do on-the-fly video encoding.

Unless it's a dedicated server, just say no.

The simple function call he wants to use appears to just do an on-the-fly frame capture to use as a thumbnail. Seems to me like a complete Mplayer installation is a whole lot of unnecessary overhead for a glorified "print screen" feature. :)