Error in logintoboggan from ffmpeg automatic video conversion job

here is the relevant code:

/**
 * Implementation of hook_init()
 *
 * @ingroup logintoboggan_core
 */
function logintoboggan_init() {

  global $user;

  // Make sure any user with pre-auth role doesn't have authenticated user role
  _logintoboggan_user_roles_alter($user);
}

/**
 * Alter user roles for loaded user account.
 *
 * If user is not an anonymous user, and the user has the pre-auth role, and the pre-auth role
 * isn't also the auth role, then unset the auth role for this user--they haven't validated yet.
 *
 * This alteration is required because sess_read() and user_load() automatically set the
 * authenticated user role for all non-anonymous users (see http://drupal.org/node/92361).
 *
 * @param &$account
 *    User account to have roles adjusted.
 */
function _logintoboggan_user_roles_alter(&$account) {
  $id = logintoboggan_validating_id();
  $in_pre_auth_role = in_array($id, array_keys($account->roles));
  if ($account->uid && $in_pre_auth_role) {
    if ($id != DRUPAL_AUTHENTICATED_RID) {
      unset($account->roles[DRUPAL_AUTHENTICATED_RID]);
    }
  }
}

it appears that the global $user object is not being populated. in a properly bootstrapped drupal page load, this should never be an issue, so the problem is with the video_scheduler.php script.