Install FFmpeg Under Windows the Easy Way

FFmpeg is a comprehensive—and for some the de facto standard—software library collection for video conversion on Linux and BSD platforms. While some Linux distributions (e.g., Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, Arch Linux, OpenSuSE) include FFmpeg, Windows users have to install additional packages to setup FFmpeg: MinGW/MSYS or cygwin or a special version of the gcc compiler with related tools or MSVC.

For those who find compiling FFmpeg tedious can use FFmpeg builds. Download and unzip the static package from http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/. This FFmpeg build was configured with the following:

  --disable-static  --enable-shared  --enable-gpl  --enable-version3  --disable-w32threads  --enable-avisynth  --enable-bzlib  --enable-fontconfig  --enable-frei0r  --enable-gnutls  --enable-iconv  --enable-libass  --enable-libbluray  --enable-libbs2b  --enable-libcaca  --enable-libdcadec  --enable-libfreetype  --enable-libgme  --enable-libgsm  --enable-libilbc  --enable-libmodplug  --enable-libmp3lame  --enable-libopencore-amrnb  --enable-libopencore-amrwb  --enable-libopenjpeg  --enable-libopus  --enable-librtmp  --enable-libschroedinger  --enable-libsoxr  --enable-libspeex  --enable-libtheora  --enable-libtwolame  --enable-libvidstab  --enable-libvo-aacenc  --enable-libvo-amrwbenc  --enable-libvorbis  --enable-libvpx  --enable-libwavpack  --enable-libwebp  --enable-libx264  --enable-libx265  --enable-libxavs  --enable-libxvid  --enable-lzma  --enable-decklink  --enable-zlib

Done! You are now ready to use FFmpeg on Windows. The folder structure contains ffmpeg.exe in the bin folder, which can be executed from the command line and supports a variety of parameters, as revealed by ffmpeg -help:

The available codecs can be listed using the ffmpeg -codecs command:

Note that FFmpeg is open source, so developers can use the FFmpeg source code for their own projects, as long as they provide the right attribution.