How to Install FFMPEG on AWS ARM (Amazon Linux 2023 — Graviton)

2 min readJun 6, 2024

If you’re working with multimedia processing on AWS, you might find yourself needing FFMPEG, a powerful multimedia framework. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the steps to install FFMPEG on an AWS ARM with Amazon Linux 2023 (Graviton) instance.

Prerequisites

An AWS account.
An AWS ARM (Graviton) instance running a Linux distribution.
Sudo privileges on the instance.

Step-by-Step Installation

Step 1: Connect to Your Instance
Start by connecting to your AWS ARM (Graviton) instance via SSH. Open your terminal and use the following command, replacing your-instance-ip with the actual IP address of your instance:

ssh -i path-to-your-key.pem ec2-user@your-instance-ip

Step 2: Navigate to the /usr/local/bin/ Directory
Change your directory to /usr/local/bin/ where we will download and install FFMPEG:

cd /usr/local/bin/

Step 3: Download FFMPEG
Use wget to download the FFMPEG release for ARM64 architecture from here:

Releases · BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds

Contribute to BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

sudo wget https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-linuxarm64-gpl.tar.xz

Step 4: Extract the Downloaded Archive
Extract the contents of the tar.xz file:

sudo tar -xf ffmpeg-master-latest-linuxarm64-gpl.tar.xz

Step 5: Move the Extracted Directory
Move the extracted directory to ffmpeg:

sudo mv ffmpeg-master-latest-linuxarm64-gpl/ ffmpeg/

Step 6: Clean Up
Remove the downloaded tar.xz file to clean up space:

sudo rm ffmpeg-master-latest-linuxarm64-gpl.tar.xz

Step 7: Set Ownership
Set the ownership of the ffmpeg directory to root:

sudo chown -R root.root ffmpeg/

Step 8: Create Symbolic Links
Create symbolic links for ffmpeg and ffprobe to make them accessible from anywhere:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/bin/ffprobe /usr/bin/ffprobe

Validation

After completing the installation steps, you can verify the installation by checking the versions of ffmpeg and ffprobe.

Check FFMPEG Version

ffmpeg -version

Check FFPROBE Version

ffprobe -version

If the installation was successful, you should see the version information for both ffmpeg and ffprobe.

Conclusion

You’ve successfully installed FFMPEG on your AWS ARM (Graviton) instance. This setup enables you to leverage the power of FFMPEG for multimedia processing tasks on ARM architecture. If you encounter any issues or have questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Happy processing!