@w3vish/ffmpeg-installer

@w3vish/ffmpeg-installer

A cross-platform FFmpeg binary installer for Node.js applications. This package provides a simple way to download and configure FFmpeg binaries for your platform, making it easy to use FFmpeg in your Node.js projects without manual installation.

⚠️ ESM Only

This package only supports ES Modules. CommonJS require() is not supported.

Installation

# Install the package
npm install @w3vish/ffmpeg-installer

After installation, run the CLI tool to install binaries:

# Install binaries via CLI
npx @w3vish/ffmpeg-installer

The CLI will prompt you to select which components to install:

• FFmpeg and FFprobe (default)
• FFmpeg only
• FFprobe only

Usage

// Import the package
import ffmpeg from '@w3vish/ffmpeg-installer';
// Or import specific paths
import { ffmpegPath, ffprobePath } from '@w3vish/ffmpeg-installer';

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

With child_process

import { spawn } from 'child_process';
import { ffmpegPath } from '@w3vish/ffmpeg-installer';

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

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

With fluent-ffmpeg

import ffmpeg from 'fluent-ffmpeg';
import { ffmpegPath, ffprobePath } from '@w3vish/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');
  })
  .run();

CLI Options

When running the installer CLI, you can specify options:

npx @w3vish/ffmpeg-installer --platform=darwin-arm64 --ffmpeg-only

Available options:

• --platform=<platform>: Specify platform (win32-x64, darwin-arm64, linux-x64, etc.)
• --ffmpeg-only: Install only FFmpeg
• --ffprobe-only: Install only FFprobe

Supported Platforms

• Windows (win32-x64, win32-ia32)
• macOS (darwin-x64, darwin-arm64)
• Linux (linux-x64, linux-arm64, linux-armv7l)

API

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

TypeScript Types

The package includes comprehensive TypeScript definitions:

// Main installer result
export interface FFmpegInstaller {
  ffmpeg?: BinaryInfo;
  ffprobe?: BinaryInfo;
  platform: string;
  arch: string;
}

// Binary information
export interface BinaryInfo {
  path: string;
  version: string;
  url: string;
}

Troubleshooting

Permission Issues

If you encounter permission errors when running the binaries on Linux/macOS:

chmod +x /path/to/ffmpeg
chmod +x /path/to/ffprobe

Installation Failures

If the installation fails, try:

npm install @w3vish/ffmpeg-installer --unsafe-perm

License

MIT