Use the FFmpeg API in Ruby on Rails

Add FFmpeg video processing to Rails apps without shelling out to a local FFmpeg install.

What you can build

• Transcode and convert video between MP4, WebM, and MOV
• Generate thumbnails and extract still frames
• Pull audio tracks out of video for podcasts and transcription
• Resize, crop, watermark, and run custom FFmpeg options
• Batch-process at scale without managing servers or a queue

Why not install FFmpeg in Ruby on Rails?

Running FFmpeg yourself (for example, streamio-ffmpeg driving a bundled binary) means shipping binaries, keeping codec builds in sync across environments, and giving video encoding its own CPU and scaling story. With the API you send an HTTP request, the job runs on dedicated hardware, and you pay only for the processing time you use. Nothing to install.

Quickstart

Grab a free API key from the dashboard (100 minutes, no card), then submit a job. It's one HTTP call, so it works from any Ruby on Rails HTTP client.

curl -X POST https://api.ffmpeg-micro.com/v1/transcodes \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FFMPEG_MICRO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"inputs":[{"url":"gs://your-bucket/input.mp4"}],"outputFormat":"mp4"}'

The API returns a job id. Poll GET /v1/transcodes/{id} until the status is completed, then fetch a signed download URL from /download. See the quickstart for the full upload, process, and download flow.

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