HomePage

FFmpeg on Windows

The purpose of this wiki is to provide help on everything that involves FFmpeg under Windows.
It originated as a step-by-step guide for building under a MSys+MinGW system, but now also includes guides for using FFmpeg's libraries in your projects (C++, C#).

It does not cover Cygwin, since this system behaves basically like a unix system, and the biggest problems of using FFmpeg occur with people that aren't very familiar with unix systems.

Before you start, these messages must be clearly understood:

First message:

FFMPEG DOES NOT BUILD UNDER MSVC++, AND WILL NOT, EVER, BUILD UNDER MSVC++.

MSVC++ does not adhere to the C99 standard, and FFmpeg relies on it, because its developers chose to rely on it. Most FFmpeg developers consider MSVC++ a broken and obscure system, and supporting it would seem more like a bug than a feature. They think using MSVC++ is a bad idea, and there is no reason for anyone to have such an absurd practice. Therefore, they will not, ever, change their mind to support MSVC++.

That means the entire build process of FFmpeg must be done with MSys+MinGW.

The libraries created by FFmpeg with MinGW are usable just like any other library (either static or shared), with a C99 compiler. This again means that MSVC++ is not supported. You can, however, modify your build system to behave more closely like a C99 system, and then you will be able to use FFmpeg's libraries with MSVC++.

Second message:

If you have any problems with this guide, please ask in the FFmpeg Windows Help Forum before asking in the ffmpeg-user mailinglist.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Prerequisites
Preparing the MSys+MinGW system
Getting FFmpeg SVN
Building FFmpeg SVN statically
Building FFmpeg SVN dlls
Building FFplay
Building VHooks
Building documentation
Using External Libraries
Using FFmpeg SVN libraries with your MSVC++ program
Using FFmpeg SVN dlls with your C# program
FFmpeg Windows Help Forum
FFmpeg Windows Links

For FFmpeg on Windows CE, follow the FFmpeg Windows Links page.

Get Started >

Contributors to this page: admin , wzrlpy , vincente13 , Smakkie and angustia .
Page last modified on Thursday 24 of April, 2008 [00:24:27 UTC] by admin.