Question

Any way to install ffmpeg on app platform without using Dockerfile / Container Image deploy?

I found only one other question on here related to installing ffmpeg on app platform and the answer which seemed to actually satisfy the question said to deploy using a Dockerfile / Container Image for the app and add the installation of ffmpeg using apt as a RUN command in the Dockerfile.

I am currently running a production PHP app in app platform using github push to deploy without a custom Dockerfile in the repo, and ideally, I would like to continue with this deployment process for the app.

Is there any means that I could have ffmpeg installed and made available to my production PHP github deployed app? Or is the only way to install ffmpeg via a custom Dockerfile / Container Image deploy process?

I realize that I can place a Dockerfile in the github repo itself and still use push to deploy to a branch that way, but if possible I would like to avoid using a custom Dockerfile for this production PHP app and continue with things as I am doing them now with the autodetection on deploy of it being a PHP app from the composer.json file.

Thanks! Jon.


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Greg M
DigitalOcean Employee
DigitalOcean Employee badge
November 1, 2022

Hello! So this might not be the prettiest solution but I managed to do this with a run_command and downloading ffmpeg manually and adding it to the path in line.

You can probably do this in a script setup.sh or similar but for simplicties sake I did it with the sample-php app and inline with the command that starts it.

Here was my run_command:

run_command: cd && mkdir -p bin/ffmpeg-build && pushd bin/ffmpeg-build && wget https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz
    && tar xf ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && cd ffmpeg-git-20220910-amd64-static
    && mv * ../../ && popd && rm -rf ./bin/ffmpeg-build && export PATH=$PATH:/workspace/bin
    && heroku-php-apache2

The instructions on how to install I found here: https://gist.github.com/jmsaavedra/62bbcd20d40bcddf27ac

and I had to modify them because the link presented in the gist 404’ed. I found the links to download ffmpeg from: https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

Which when you click the static binaries it redirects you to https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/.

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