FFmpeg/FFprobe for AWS Lambda

A Lambda layer containing a static version of FFmpeg/FFprobe utilities from the FFmpeg Linux package, compatible with Amazon Linux 2.x and Amazon Linux 1.x instances (including the nodejs10.x runtime, and the updated 2018.03 Amazon Linux 1 runtimes).

This README covers general usage, building, and manual deployment. README-SAR.md is a shorter, separate description rendered by the AWS Serverless Application Repository console itself (see template.yaml's ReadmeUrl) — the two are written for different audiences and are not duplicates. For AI agents working on this codebase, see CLAUDE.md and docs/architecture.md.

Usage

Absolutely the easiest way of using this is to pull it directly from the AWS Serverless Application repository into a CloudFormation/SAM application, or deploy directly from the Serverless Application Repository into your account, and then link as a layer.

The ffmpeg and ffprobe binaries will be in /opt/bin/ after linking the layer to a Lambda function.

For more information, check out the ffmpeg-lambda-layer application in the Serverless App Repository.

For manual deployments and custom builds, read below...

Prerequisites

• Unix Make environment
• AWS command line utilities (just for deployment)

Deploying to AWS as a layer

This package includes FFmpeg 4.1.3, packaged by John Van Sickle. Please consider supporting him for maintaining statically built FFmpeg packages. For more information, check out https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/

Note that the Makefile always fetches John Van Sickle's latest static build (a rolling release alias, not a version-pinned URL), so a fresh build on a clean checkout may package a newer FFmpeg version than the 4.1.3 described here — see docs/architecture.md.

The output will be in the build dir (build/layer/bin/ for the extracted binaries, build/output.yaml for the packaged CloudFormation template).

Run the following command to deploy the compiled result as a layer in your AWS account.

make deploy DEPLOYMENT_BUCKET=<YOUR BUCKET NAME>

configuring the deployment

By default, this uses ffmpeg-lambda-layer as the stack name. Provide a STACK_NAME variable when calling make deploy to use an alternative name.

example usage

An example project is in the example directory. It sets up two buckets, and listens to file uploads on the first bucket to convert and generate thumbnails from uploaded video files. You can deploy it from the root Makefile using:

make deploy-example DEPLOYMENT_BUCKET=<YOUR BUCKET NAME>

For more information on using FFmpeg and FFprobe, check out https://ffmpeg.org/documentation.html

Author

Gojko Adzic https://gojko.net

License

• These scripts: MIT
• FFmpeg: GPLv2.1 http://ffmpeg.org/legal.html, John Van Sickle's static build GPL v3 https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/

LGPL version

• Giuseppe Battista created a build that contains only LGPL components, for organisations that are concerned about GPL licensing. See it at https://github.com/giusedroid/ffmpeg-aws-lambda-layer/tree/license/lgpl