How to read remote video on Amazon S3 using ffmpeg

Question

I need to create poster frames from videos hosted on Amazon S3 via ffmpeg.

So is there a way to use the remote video file directly in ffmpeg command line like this:
ffmpeg -i "http://bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/video.mp4" -ss 00:00:10 -vframes 1 -f image2 "image%03d.jpg"

ffmpeg just returns:
http://bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/video.mp4: I/O error occurred Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.

I also tried forcing ffmpeg to use the videos mp4 container for reading:
ffmpeg -f mp4 -i "http://bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/video.mp4" ...
But no luck.

Wget this video from S3 and processing it locally works fine of course,
as well as reading the file remotely from other 'standard' http servers.
So I know that ffmpeg supports remote file reading, but why not on S3?

score 46 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 18 '19 at 07:15

46

Nevermind, I found an easy way to solve my problem.

I set up an amazon cloudfront download distribution pointing to my S3 bucket.
Via cloudfront the files are accessible with ffmpeg over http:

ffmpeg -i "http://subdomain.cloudfront.net/video.mp4" -ss 00:00:10 -vframes 1 -f image2 "image%03d.jpg"

And the data transfer is even cheaper! But still wondering why this won't work with S3 directly...

edited Jul 18 '19 at 07:15

buræquete

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answered Apr 23 '10 at 15:21

virtualize

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I had the same issue, pulling from the bucket directly doesn't work. It also didn't work pulling the video through Limelight's CDN. Only worked via cloudfront. Very strange.. – bskinnersf May 14 '10 at 00:23
Works for me when I add bucket policy – Lukasz Madon Feb 13 '14 at 14:06
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I think it may help to specify the `-ss` value first, re: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18534835/fastest-way-to-extract-a-specific-frame-from-a-video-php-ffmpeg-anything – weisjohn May 09 '14 at 15:11
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@LukaszMadon what bucket policy did you add? – Somename Apr 07 '17 at 02:39
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how do we access the ffmpeg on aws lambda? – Chetan Vashisth May 06 '20 at 14:00

score 26 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '19 at 15:59

26

For everyone who came here looking how to do this with S3 only, The AWS SDK can now generate presigned urls.

ffprobe -i "$(aws s3 presign s3://MY_BUCKET/MY_FILE --expires 5)"

answered Mar 05 '19 at 15:59

Stefan

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Thanks, this was very useful! The current link to the .Net SDK page presign is https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/ShareObjectPreSignedURLDotNetSDK.html – Mmm Jun 20 '20 at 21:11

score 11 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 02 '17 at 02:28

11

In my case, reading directly form S3 bucket work like a charm. To be more specific, my S3 object has private permission so I'm passing a Signed-URL to ffmpeg.

I use ruby and AWSRubySDK to generate a Signed-URL. http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSRubySDK/latest/AWS/S3/S3Object.html#url_for-instance_method

Check your S3 object's permission.

edited Nov 02 '17 at 02:28

coffee-grinder

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answered Sep 19 '12 at 06:28

shuji.koike

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What specific command did u use with ffmpeg for signed urls ? I'm getting bad request error. Also it works perfectly fine for normal urls. – Ahmad hamza Sep 18 '17 at 09:21

How to read remote video on Amazon S3 using ffmpeg

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