@w3vish/ffmpeg-installer

FFmpeg Installer

A cross-platform FFmpeg binary installer for Node.js applications. This package automatically downloads and configures FFmpeg binaries for your platform, making it easy to use FFmpeg in your Node.js projects without manual installation.

Features

• 🚀 Automatic FFmpeg/FFprobe binary installation
• 🔄 Cross-platform support (Windows, macOS, Linux, and more)
• 📦 Simple API for accessing binary paths
• ⚙️ Customizable installation options
• ✨ Optimized download with progress tracking
• 🔍 Flexible - install only what you need (FFmpeg only, FFprobe only, or both)

Installation

# Install both FFmpeg and FFprobe (default)
npm install ffmpeg-installer

# Install only FFmpeg
npm install ffmpeg-installer --ffmpeg-only

# Install only FFprobe
npm install ffmpeg-installer --ffprobe-only

Usage

Basic Usage

// ES modules
import ffmpeg from 'ffmpeg-installer';

// CommonJS
const ffmpeg = require('ffmpeg-installer');

console.log('FFmpeg path:', ffmpeg.ffmpegPath);
console.log('FFprobe path:', ffmpeg.ffprobePath);
console.log('FFmpeg version:', ffmpeg.version);

With child_process

import { spawn } from 'child_process';
import { ffmpegPath } from 'ffmpeg-installer';

const process = spawn(ffmpegPath, [
  '-i', 'input.mp4',
  '-c:v', 'libx264',
  '-preset', 'fast',
  'output.mp4'
]);

process.stdout.on('data', (data) => {
  console.log(`stdout: ${data}`);
});

process.stderr.on('data', (data) => {
  console.log(`stderr: ${data}`);
});

process.on('close', (code) => {
  console.log(`Child process exited with code ${code}`);
});

With fluent-ffmpeg

import ffmpeg from 'fluent-ffmpeg';
import { ffmpegPath, ffprobePath } from 'ffmpeg-installer';

// Set paths
ffmpeg.setFfmpegPath(ffmpegPath);
ffmpeg.setFfprobePath(ffprobePath);

// Use fluent-ffmpeg
ffmpeg('input.mp4')
  .output('output.mp4')
  .on('end', () => {
    console.log('Conversion finished');
  })
  .on('error', (err) => {
    console.error('Error:', err);
  })
  .run();

Advanced Usage

Custom Platform Installation

You can install binaries for a specific platform by providing the --platform flag:

npm install ffmpeg-installer --platform=win32-x64

Supported platforms:

• win32-x64 - Windows 64-bit
• win32-ia32 - Windows 32-bit
• darwin-x64 - macOS 64-bit
• darwin-arm64 - macOS Apple Silicon
• linux-x64 - Linux 64-bit
• linux-arm64 - Linux ARM 64-bit
• linux-armv7l - Linux ARM v7

Install Only What You Need

You can choose to install only FFmpeg or only FFprobe:

# FFmpeg only
npm install ffmpeg-installer --ffmpeg-only

# FFprobe only
npm install ffmpeg-installer --ffprobe-only

# Combine with platform specific installation
npm install ffmpeg-installer --platform=darwin-arm64 --ffmpeg-only

API

The package exports the following properties:

Property	Type	Description
path	string	Path to the FFmpeg binary (alias for ffmpegPath)
ffmpegPath	string	Path to the FFmpeg binary
ffprobePath	string	Path to the FFprobe binary
version	string	Version of the FFmpeg binaries
url	string	URL from where the binaries were downloaded
platform	string	Current platform identifier
arch	string	Current architecture identifier

How It Works

This package follows these steps during installation:

• Platform Detection: Automatically identifies your system's platform and architecture
• Download: Fetches the appropriate FFmpeg binaries from reliable sources
• Extraction: Unpacks the downloaded archive
• Configuration: Sets up the binaries and creates a configuration file
• Cleanup: Removes temporary files

The downloaded binaries are stored in a platform-specific directory within the package, making them accessible across your application.

Troubleshooting

Permission Issues

If you encounter permission errors when running the binaries:

# For Linux/macOS
chmod +x /path/to/ffmpeg
chmod +x /path/to/ffprobe

Installation Failures

If the installation fails, you can try:

npm install ffmpeg-installer --unsafe-perm

Custom Binary Location

If you have FFmpeg binaries installed elsewhere, you can manually set the path in your app:

import { spawn } from 'child_process';

// Override the path
const ffmpegPath = '/custom/path/to/ffmpeg';
const process = spawn(ffmpegPath, [...your args]);

License

MIT © Vishal Suryavanshi