How to install ffmpeg on App Platform

👋 @brunononatoquaresma

Commands like apt are not currently supported. Like you mentioned, the workaround is to deploy from a Dockerfile or build your own container image.

To run a NodeJS app without Buildpacks, one option is to use node as the base image in your Dockerfile (DockerHub link):

FROM node:16

RUN apt update && \
    apt install -y ffmpeg

EXPOSE 8080
ADD server.js .
ENTRYPOINT ["node", "server.js"]

I wrote server.js to verify I can run ffmpeg commands in my NodeJS app. I can share the source code if that’s helpful.

Hope this helps!

Not a fix for your problem, but an alternative option you might be interested in.

You can use FFMPEG WASM for many basic to medium FFMPEG use cases right in the browser.

That’s what I use.

Caveat: Works on Chrome latest (92+) best. And you gotta have some headers present for SharedArrayBuffer to work well. Just a heads up.

Hi there,

Quick update here, the App Platform now supports this via Aptfile:

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/reference/buildpacks/aptfile/

App Platform looks for a file named Aptfile (no file extension) to detect an application requiring system packages. If this file is detected, the heroku-buildpack-apt buildpack is used to install any packages listed in the Aptfile during the build process.

The following example Aptfile declares three system packages to install:

libpq-dev
imagemagick
curl

This example installs:

• libpq-dev: A library for PostgreSQL applications.
• imagemagick: A command-line tool for image processing.
• curl: A command line tool for making HTTP requests.

Another option here remains the usage of a Dockerfile which gives you more flexibility:

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/reference/dockerfile/

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby