how to set up `ffmpeg` as a lambda layer

what i learned

how to add ffmpeg and ffprobe as a lambda layer to be used by lambda functions.

Getting ffmpeg

# ffmpeg
wget https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz

# checksum
wget https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz.md5

md5sum -c ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz.md5

# extract
tar xvf ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz

Side note: i had to brew install md5sha1sum and brew install wget on my local laptop

Creating Lambda Layer

create ffmpeg/bin/
copy ffmpeg into it
zip ffmpeg/

# Create bin/
mkdir -p ffmpeg/bin

# Copy ffmpeg
cp ffmpeg-6.0-amd64-static/ffmpeg ffmpeg/bin

# Zip directory
cd ffmpeg
zip -r ../ffmpeg.zip .

Finally

Upload zip file as a lambda layer.

Bonus

In my case I also included ffprobe as it's also required for whisper.

how i learned

i've been using OpenAI's whisper and i want to set it up as a lambda function to transcribe files as they land on an S3 bucket.

reference

AWS blog: "Processing User Generated Content using AWS Lambda and FFmpeg

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how to set up ffmpeg as a lambda layer