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Installing FFmpeg

Camillo Carmesin edited this page Feb 15, 2022 · 19 revisions

Note: As of authoring tool release v0.7.0 (2019-03-25), manual FFmpeg installation is no longer necessary. Please only follow the below instructions for earlier versions.

Installing FFmpeg in Windows

For one user (yourself)

  1. Download a shared or static build.

    Shared builds are smaller on the disk and have higher performance. Static builds have fewer files.

  2. Unpack it into the folder of your choice.

  3. Edit your PATH environment variable to include FFmpeg. One way of doing it is the following:

    1. Open Windows PowerShell.

    2. Type the following line in PowerShell, after modifying it to have the correct path to the folder containing ffmpeg.exe.

      $ffmpeg = 'F:\FFmpeg\bin'
    3. Copy and paste the following lines into PowerShell.

      $path = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('Path', 'User').TrimEnd([Char]';')
      [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "$path;$ffmpeg", 'User')

    Warning:

    • Sources on the Internet may suggest using setx.exe to modify your PATH environment variable. Unfortunately, this approach is unreliable, because setx.exe is blind as to what it edits.

For several user (per-machine)

  1. Download a shared or static build.

    Shared builds are smaller on the disk and have higher performance. Static builds have fewer files.

  2. Unpack it into C:\Program Files\ffmpeg.

  3. Edit your PATH environment variable to include FFmpeg. One way of doing it is the following:

    1. Open Windows PowerShell with administrative privileges.

    2. Copy and paste the following lines into PowerShell.

      $ffmpeg = 'C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\bin'
      $path = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('Path', 'Machine').TrimEnd([Char]';')
      [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "$path;$ffmpeg", 'Machine')

    Warning:

    • Sources on the Internet may suggest using setx.exe /M to modify your PATH environment variable. Unfortunately, this approach is extremely dangerous, because setx.exe /M is blind as to what it edits.

Installing FFmpeg in OS X

Here are a couple of links to instructions:
http://www.idiotinside.com/2016/05/01/ffmpeg-mac-os-x/
http://macappstore.org/ffmpeg/

Installing FFmpeg in Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg  
sudo apt-get install frei0r-plugins  

Helpful links for Ubuntu users:

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