Installation for Window users

Table of Contents

• Installing the software with Homebrew
• Installing the software with Chocolatey
• Installing the software from a build
• Testing your installation

Installing the software with Homebrew

While waiting for Homebrew working directly on Windows, please follow the instructions given at Installation for the Linux users in this Cookbook. This works fine on both the Windows Terminal (recommended) and Windows Subsystem for Linux, as well as the various Linux distribution apps.

In order for Homebrew to install other applications, the compliler gcc is needed. It can be installed on Windows by running in the Terminal:

brew install gcc

Installing the software with Chocolatey

Chocolatey

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. You can install Chocolatey by opening an administrative Command Prompt (e.g. command-click onto cmd.exe) and pasting the following command at the prompt:

 

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin

FFmpeg

Once Chocolatey is installed, you can build FFmpeg with the command:

 

choco install ffmpeg

You should now have the commands ffmpeg, ffplay and ffprobe installed. You can now close the administrative Command Prompt and open a regular one (cmd.exe).

Installing the software from a build

Download and install the binary of the latest release provided by Gyan Doshi:

• ffmpeg (49.5 MB)

Then you can:

1. Create a folder named C:\FFmpeg or any other name you prefer.
2. Put the three executables ffmpeg.exe, ffprobe.exe and ffplay.exe into this folder.
3. Navigate to Environment Variables, e.g. by doing a search for Edit the system environment variables.
4. In the Environment Variables window select the Variable Path end click on New.
5. Type the path of the FFmpeg folder (C:\FFmpeg in our example) and click on OK to apply the changes.

Testing your installation

ffmpeg

Test ffmpeg by pasting into the Terminal or the Command Prompt the line:

 

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i mandelbrot -t 10 -pix_fmt yuv420p Desktop\mandelbrot.mkv

 

This should produce on your Desktop a file of the Mandelbrot pattern.

ffplay

Test ffplay by pasting into the Terminal or the Command Prompt the line:

 

ffplay Desktop\mandelbrot.mkv

 

This should play the Mandelbrot file.

ffprobe

Test ffprobe by pasting into the Terminal or the Command Prompt the line:

 

ffprobe -show_format -show_streams -print_format json Desktop\mandelbrot.mkv

 

This should display the Mandelbrot file’s technical metadata.

2024-06-05