Installing FFmpeg

Remotion requires FFmpeg to encode videos. Since v3.3, you do not need to install FFmpeg manually. This page documents the behavior of Remotion for developers needing advanced control.

ffmpeg and ffprobe

Two binaries are required for Remotion: ffmpeg and ffprobe. When talking about FFmpeg in the documentation, it may also refer to FFprobe.

Auto-install

When rendering a video and binaries are not found, Remotion will download them from the internet and put it inside your node_modules folder. The binary will not get added to your PATH, so if you type in ffmpeg into your Terminal, it may not be found. However, Remotion will be able to use it

Supported architectures

Auto-install is supported on the following platforms:

• Linux, x86_64,
• macOS, Intel
• macOS, Apple Silicon
• Windows, x86_64

For other platforms, you need to supply your own binaries.

Triggering auto-install

By rendering a video, the download of FFmpeg will be triggered automatically.

On servers, it might be of use to install the binaries before the first render, so no time is wasted once the first render begins.

• Using the CLI, you can run npx remotion install ffmpeg and npx remotion install ffprobe to trigger auto-install of binaries. If the binaries exist, the command will do nothing. This requires @remotion/cli to be installed.
• The @remotion/renderer package exposes ensureFfmpeg() and ensureFfprobe() functions

Order of priority

In case of multiple binaries being supplied, they priority order is the following:

• If a binary was supplied using the ffmpegExecutable or ffprobeExecutable option, it will be used.
• If ffmpeg or ffprobe is in the PATH, it will be used.
• If a binary was previously installed by Remotion into node_modules, it will be used.
• If a binary can be downloaded from the internet, Remotion will do so and use it.
• Failure if no binary was found using the logic above.