Platform independent binary installer of FFmpeg for node projects. Useful for tools that should "just work" on multiple environments.

Installs a binary of ffmpeg for the current platform and provides a path and version. Supports Linux, Windows and Mac OS/X.

A combination of package.json fields optionalDependencies, cpu, and os let's the installer only download the binary for the current platform. See also "Warnings during install", below.

npm install --save @ffmpeg-installer/ffmpeg

const ffmpeg = require('@ffmpeg-installer/ffmpeg');
console.log(ffmpeg.path, ffmpeg.version);

const ffmpegPath = require('@ffmpeg-installer/ffmpeg').path;
const spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
const ffmpeg = spawn(ffmpegPath, args);
ffmpeg.on('exit', onExit);

const ffmpegPath = require('@ffmpeg-installer/ffmpeg').path;
const ffmpeg = require('fluent-ffmpeg');
ffmpeg.setFfmpegPath(ffmpegPath);

To automatically choose the binary to install, optionalDependencies are used. This currently outputs warnings in the console, an issue that is tracked by the npm team here.

If you get permissions issues, try adding a .npmrc file with the following:

unsafe-perm=true

See issue #21

It's a known issue that Asar breaks native paths. As a workaround, if you use Asar, you can do something like this:

const ffmpegPath = require('@ffmpeg-installer/ffmpeg').path.replace('app.asar', 'app.asar.unpacked');

Downloaded from the sources listed at ffmpeg.org:

• Linux 32-bit: (20181210-g0e8eb07980): https://www.johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/
• Linux 64-bit: (20181210-g0e8eb07980): https://www.johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/
• Mac OS/X (92718-g092cb17983): https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/
• Windows 32-bit (20181217-f22fcd4): https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win32/static/
• Windows 64-bit (20181217-f22fcd4): https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win64/static/

For version updates, submit issue or pull request.

In every updated platforms/* directory:

npm run upload

• node-ffprobe-installer - fork of this project that does the same thing for FFprobe