The Ffmpeg library is a comprehensive suite of media conversion tools packed into one tool. Its most common use is to convert videos from one format to another, and it’s often a requirement for website packages that handle video uploading from page visitors, such as PHPFox, and Boonex Dolphin.
Unfortunately ffmpeg releases a new major version every six months or so, so it’s impossible for us to keep it updated globally across all our shared servers, and if we tried, we’d risk breaking functionality for users that used the older versions.
For this reason we no longer install ffmpeg globally on our shared servers, and instead recommend that users who require ffmpeg provide their own copy of it. To ensure that the copy you use will work on our servers without conflicts with the system version or its libraries, you need to make sure that the version you upload to the server is a ‘Static Build’, made specifically so that everything ffmpeg needs is included inside the ffmpeg program itself. This makes it bigger, but also means it can run completely independently from the system software and should always work.
Obtaining your Static Build
You will need to check with your documentation for your website software to find out what version of ffmpeg you need to install. Once you know that, you can head over to a site like the one linked below to download a static build of that version of ffmpeg.
The following link is a link to a website we do not own or operate, so it may at any time no longer be accurate. If this happens, let us know!
The most useful resource we’ve found for ffmpeg static builds is here:
https://www.johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/
This site has many builds for different architectures, but to ensure the one you want works on our servers, make sure you download an ‘i686’ build.
If you need an older version of ffmpeg compared to the current version released, you can use the ‘old releases’ link on that page to view and download the one you need.
Once you’ve downloaded this file, you’ll need to extract it.
Modern Windows versions (10, and 11) can open this file directly and extract its contents. If you can’t, you may need to use a third-party tool such as WinRAR to open .tar.xz files.
Installation
After extracting the archive, log into your cPanel and open the file manager.
Make sure you’re on the root folder (click the /home/ line at the top on the left) and then click the “+Folder” button at the top. Name the new folder ‘ffmpeg’
Make sure when you create this new folder that the name is fully lower-case, otherwise the instructions below may not match up correctly!
Once the folder is created, navigate to it in the file manager, and then upload three files from your extracted archive:
- ffmpeg
- ffprobe
- qt-faststart
Finally, set all the permissions for these three files to ‘755’ using the ‘Permissions’ button at the top of the File Manager. When you’re done it should look a bit like this:
That’s the hard part done! The last step is updating your website application settings to point to the correct ffmpeg path. Since you put it in a folder inside your own account, your path to ffmpeg would be:
/home/username/ffmpeg/ffmpeg
Just remember to replace ‘username’ with your actual cPanel username!