#3 Technical Series : How to compile and setup FFmpeg on Mac
FFmpeg is a rich multimedia framework which can handle most exhaustive image and video processing tasks. FFmpeg
can perform encoding, decoding, transcoding, muxing, demuxing, playback and streaming for audio and video content. In addition to open source, FFmpeg has unique advantage of supporting large number of media containers, codecs and file formats.
FFmpeg can be used on Mac by either downloading a static build or compiling FFmpeg for Mac. Compiling FFmpeg on Mac is easy and and similar to doing it on other Linux distributions. Below are step by step instructions to setup FFmpeg on Mac using Homebrew. If you are a Windows user and want to compile FFmpeg for windows, please refer here to setup FFmpeg under Cygwin for Windows.
1. Install or Update Xcode
Latest version of Xcode (6.3.1) is quite bulky ~ 2.5 GB so it is going to take time. Download Xcode from App Store and install it.
2. Install Homebrew
Homebrew is an excellent package manager and can save trouble to downloading, configuring and building binaries separately. Install Homebrew using below command
nitinnarang$ nitinnarang$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" ==> This script will install: /usr/local/bin/brew /usr/local/Library/... /usr/local/share/man/man1/brew.1 Press RETURN to continue or any other key to abort ==> /usr/bin/sudo /bin/mkdir /usr/local WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information. To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.
Key in super user password and all dependencies start to get download and get installed. Once finished run “brew doctor” to confirm the status of brew.
nitinnarang$ nitinnarang$ brew doctor Your system is ready to brew.
3. Use Homebrew to explore FFmpeg compile options
Brew takes the pain of finding and downloading the dependencies. Use brew to find FFmpeg options. The command “brew options ffmpeg ” will provide all package option available for FFmpeg, some of these options are shown below
nitinnarang$ nitinnarang$ brew options ffmpeg --with-faac Build with faac support --with-fdk-aac Enable the Fraunhofer FDK AAC library --with-ffplay Enable FFplay media player ........................................................................... --without-x264 Disable H.264 encoder --without-xvid Disable Xvid MPEG-4 video encoder --HEAD Install HEAD version
4. Select FFmpeg options and compile
One can select required FFmpeg options and run “brew install ffmpeg” along with the selected options. Brew will resolve all dependencies, download and compile the dependent libraries. Below command has most of the FFmpeg options selected
nitinnarang$ nitinnarang$ brew install ffmpeg --with-fdk-aac --with-ffplay --with-freetype --with-frei0r --with-libass --with-libvo-aacenc --with-libvorbis --with-libvpx --with-opencore-amr --with-openjpeg --with-opus --with-rtmpdump --with-schroedinger --with-speex --with-theora --with-tools --with-x265 ==> Installing dependencies for ffmpeg: pkg-config, texi2html, yasm, x264, lame, libvo-aacenc, xvid, libpng, freetype, libogg, libvorbis, theora, libvpx, openssl, rtmpdump, o ==> Installing ffmpeg dependency: pkg-config ==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/pkg-config-0.28.yosemite.bottle.2.tar.gz ######################################################################## 100.0%
FFmpeg will get built without libfaac for licensing reasons. User can use libvo-aacenc as default audio encoder.
5. FFmpeg is ready to use
FFmpeg binaries are generated under “/usr/local/Cellar” with sym link created
nitinnarang$ nitinnarang$ which ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg nitinnarang$ cd /usr/local/bin/ nitinnarang$ ls -al ffmpeg lrwxr-xr-x 1 nitinnarang admin 33 Apr 26 23:17 ffmpeg -> ../Cellar/ffmpeg/2.6.2/bin/ffmpeg
Run “ffmpeg” which display all compile option used for building the FFmpeg binary
nitinnarang$
nitinnarang$ ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 2.6.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
built with Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.49) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/2.6.2 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-libx264 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libxvid --enable-libfreetype --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-librtmp --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libfaac --enable-libass --enable-ffplay --enable-libspeex --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libfdk-aac --enable-libopus --enable-frei0r --enable-libx265 --enable-libopenjpeg --disable-decoder=jpeg2000 --extra-cflags='-I/usr/local/Cellar/openjpeg/1.5.1_1/include/openjpeg-1.5 ' --enable-nonfree --enable-vda
libavutil 54. 20.100 / 54. 20.100
libavcodec 56. 26.100 / 56. 26.100
libavformat 56. 25.101 / 56. 25.101
libavdevice 56. 4.100 / 56. 4.100
libavfilter 5. 11.102 / 5. 11.102
libavresample 2. 1. 0 / 2. 1. 0
libswscale 3. 1.101 / 3. 1.101
libswresample 1. 1.100 / 1. 1.100
libpostproc 53. 3.100 / 53. 3.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...
FFmpeg is ready to use… Happy image and video processing with FFmpeg.
