ffmpeg-static-electron-forge

This package provides an easy and quick integration of FFmpeg with electron-forge and webpack. It's lightweight and does not affect production, and it's very easy to use. Thank you for using this package!

Installation

To install the package, run the following command in your project:

  npm install ffmpeg-static-electron-forge

The library detects your operating system and downloads the binaries, but you can set env var ALL_BINS=true flag to download all of them for Windows, Linux, Mac, which is approximately 250MB. You can also use your own optimized or customized binaries by creating a bin folder in node_modules/ffmpeg-static-electron-forge, and make sure that the operating system directories match os.platform() and the architecture matches os.arch().

Linux, Mac

  export ALL_BINS=true
  npm install ffmpeg-static-electron-forge

Windows

  $env:ALL_BINS="true"
  npm install ffmpeg-static-electron-forge

Usage

To use the package, simply add ffmpeg-static-electron-forge to your development dependencies. Once installed, you can access FFmpeg from your electron-forge configuration. It's important to set asar: true in packagerConfig.

const path = require("path");
const FFmpegStatic = require("ffmpeg-static-electron-forge").default;

module.exports = {
  packagerConfig: {
    asar: true, // Important
  },
  rebuildConfig: {},
  makers: [
    {
      name: "@electron-forge/maker-squirrel",
      config: {},
    },
    {
      name: "@electron-forge/maker-zip",
      platforms: ["darwin"],
    },
    {
      name: "@electron-forge/maker-deb",
      config: {},
    },
    {
      name: "@electron-forge/maker-rpm",
      config: {},
    },
  ],
  plugins: [
    {
      name: "@electron-forge/plugin-webpack",
      config: {
        mainConfig: "./webpack.main.config.js",
        renderer: {
          config: "./webpack.renderer.config.js",
          entryPoints: [
            {
              html: "./src/index.html",
              js: "./src/renderer.js",
              name: "main_window",
              preload: {
                js: "./src/preload.js",
              },
            },
          ],
        },
      },
    },
    new FFmpegStatic({
      remove: true, // Required
      path: path.join(__dirname, ".webpack", "main"), // Set path of main build
    }),
  ],
};

import ffmpeg from "fluent-ffmpeg";
import { paths } from "ffmpeg-static-electron-forge";

const ffmpegPath = paths.ffmpegPath.replace("app.asar", "app.asar.unpacked");
const ffprobePath = paths.ffprobePath.replace("app.asar", "app.asar.unpacked");

ffmpeg.setFfmpegPath(ffmpegPath);
ffmpeg.setFfprobePath(ffprobePath);

export default ffmpeg;

Known errors

The first error that is not from this package, if not from fluent-ffmpeg is when doing a make to the application, this error is easily fixable by changing in the index.js in the node_modules folder this code.

This needs to be changed:

module.exports = process.env.FLUENTFFMPEG_COV ? require('./lib-cov/fluent-ffmpeg') : require('./lib/fluent-ffmpeg');

for this

module.exports = require('./lib/fluent-ffmpeg');

or explicitly set the environment variable process.env.FLUENTFFMPEG_COV to false

Another error is that in development mode the binaries are not found.

the latest version of this package solves this problem and here is an example of how to export ffmpeg for development and production.

NOTE: this example works whether you are using ES Modules or require.

import { paths, bins } from "ffmpeg-static-electron-forge";
import ffmpeg from "fluent-ffmpeg";
import path from "path";

let ffmpegPath: string, ffprobePath: string;

if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== "development") {
  ffmpegPath = paths.ffmpegPath.replace("app.asar", "app.asar.unpacked");
  ffprobePath = paths.ffprobePath.replace("app.asar", "app.asar.unpacked");
} else {
  let ffmpegBinPaths = path.dirname(
    require.resolve("ffmpeg-static-electron-forge")
  );
  ffmpegBinPaths = path.resolve(process.cwd(), ffmpegBinPaths, "bin");
  ffmpegPath = path.join(ffmpegBinPaths, bins.ffmpegPath);
  ffprobePath = path.join(ffmpegBinPaths, bins.ffprobePath);
}

ffmpeg.setFfmpegPath(ffmpegPath);
ffmpeg.setFfprobePath(ffprobePath);

for older versions you will have to manually copy the path to the binaries and use them while they are under development.

X:\MyApp\node_modules\ffmpeg-static-electron-forge\dist\bin\win32\x64\ffmpeg.exe
X:\MyApp\node_modules\ffmpeg-static-electron-forge\dist\bin\win32\x64\ffprobe.exe

Contributions

If you find any issues or have any suggestions to improve this package, please create an issue on our GitHub repository. If you want to contribute with code, please fork the repository and create a pull request with your changes.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. You can read the full license in the LICENSE file.