FFmpeg Build Instructions

Setting up your build environment

Setting up on Windows

1. Install Visual Studio 2019 (Free Community Edition works fine). Remember to select the C++ packages.
2. Install Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org).
3. Run the following from command line:

choco install cmake ninja nasm msys2

The build scripts expect that msys2 will be installed to C:\tools\msys64. You'll need to pass -DUL_MSYS2_PATH="C:\your\msys2\path" to the CMake command line if this is not the case.

4. Run the msys2 shell (open a new command prompt and type msys2) and run the following to install the needed development packages:

pacman -S --needed base-devel

Hit Enter to install all packages by default.

5. Add the following locations to your PATH on Windows (or similar locations if Windows was not installed on the C:\ drive):

• C:\Program Files\CMake\bin
• C:\Program Files\NASM

Setting up on macOS

1. Install Xcode Command Line Tools (or the full Xcode package).
2. Download the macOS 10.14 Platform SDK from https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX-SDKs/releases and extract it to /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk.
3. Install Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)
4. Run the following from the Terminal to setup the needed homebrew packages:

brew install cmake ninja nasm

Setting up on Linux

To get everything on Linux, just type the following:

sudo apt install cmake ninja-build

Building from source

Building on Windows

At present, to build with Visual Studio, you need to run cmake from inside the VS 2019 command prompt. Press Start, and search for VS 2019, and click on x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019, or a prompt named similar to that.

Then, from the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019, change directories to this folder and run the following:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -GNinja
ninja
ninja install

Building on macOS and Linux

To build for macOS/Linux:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -GNinja
ninja
ninja install

Build products

Build products will be in <build_dir>/out.