Transmute on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

Transmute - Self Hosted File Converter by cloudimg

Deploy a private, self-hosted file converter on your own Azure infrastructure in minutes - no manual installation, no shared credentials, and no sending your files to a public conversion website. This image delivers Transmute 2.0.0 fully installed and hardened, with its entire conversion toolchain already inside the image, so you sign in and convert a file immediately after the VM boots.

Why This Image Instead of Manual Installation

Installing Transmute by hand means running a container, assembling a large conversion toolchain, putting a reverse proxy in front of it, and then solving the fact that upstream hands administrator rights to whoever creates the first account. This image removes that burden:

• Transmute 2.0.0 as the official upstream container, pinned by image digest and captured into the VM so first boot does not download several gigabytes
• The complete conversion toolchain preinstalled: ffmpeg, Ghostscript, Inkscape, Tesseract OCR, LibreOffice, Pandoc, Calibre and Draw.io
• Host nginx as the single public listener on port 80 with a bounded upload size; the application itself is bound to the loopback interface
• Secure by default: a per instance administrator password and token signing key generated on first boot, with the account claimed while the public port is still closed
• Anonymous and guest conversions disabled, and no open self registration
• Uploaded and converted files cleaned up automatically on a retention window
• The licence of every bundled conversion tool recorded on the instance for compliance review

Use Case: A Private Converter for a Team

A team regularly needs to change file formats but the material is confidential and public conversion websites are not acceptable. They launch a VM inside their own VNet, sign in with the per instance administrator password, add an account for each colleague, and convert files entirely within their own subscription. Per user API keys let the same conversions run from scripts.

Application Stack

Transmute is a Python FastAPI backend serving a built React single page application, with SQLite for metadata and a thread pool conversion queue. Conversion work is delegated to established open source tools bundled in the image: ffmpeg for video and audio, Pillow and PyMuPDF for images and PDF, Ghostscript and OCRmyPDF for documents, Inkscape for vector formats, LibreOffice for office files, Pandoc and Calibre for text and ebooks, and Tesseract for OCR. There is no external database.

Secure By Default

Upstream Transmute grants administrator rights to whoever creates the first account, and accepts that request with no authentication while the account list is empty - so an exposed instance can be claimed by a passer-by. This image closes that window entirely. On first boot the instance generates a unique administrator password and token signing key into a root only file, and claims the administrator account itself over the loopback interface while the public port is still closed. Only once that account exists does the public listener start; from then on the application's own code refuses further account creation without an administrator token. There is no default or shared credential in the image.

The image also records the exact licence inventory of its conversion toolchain, and the build refuses to proceed unless the bundled ffmpeg is a redistributable build free of non-redistributable components.

Getting Started

1. Launch the image on your chosen Azure VM size 2. Read the per instance administrator password from the root only credentials file over SSH 3. Browse to the VM public IP on port 80 and sign in 4. Drop a file on the converter, pick a target format and download the result

Licensing and Pricing

Transmute is licensed under the MIT licence and is free; there is no per-seat fee. The cloudimg charge of 0.04 US dollars per vCPU hour covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance, and 24/7 expert support by email. Restrict port 80 to trusted networks before production, and size the VM for the work: video transcoding is CPU bound and benefits from more cores.

Transmute is a trademark of its respective owner. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.