Installation and Requirements

Video Converter requires a working Python installation, and a fairly recent version of ffmpeg libraries and utilities (ffmpeg and ffprobe).

Video Converter installation

To build the library, run:

python setup.py build

To run automated tests:

python setup.py test

To create this documentation:

python setup.py doc

To install the library:

python setup.py install

Custom compiling ffmpeg

The supported formats and codecs depend on the support compiled in to ffmpeg. Many distributors choose to enable only a subset of the supported codecs, so if the version installed by your OS/distribution doesn’t support a particular feature, it’s advisable to recompile ffmpeg yourself.

The latest development version of FFmpeg can be downloaded from the official git repository.

To build all the codecs that Video Converter can use, you can use the following configure options:

./configure --prefix=${TARGET_PREFIX} \
     --extra-cflags=-I${TARGET_PREFIX}/include \
     --extra-ldflags=-L${TARGET_PREFIX}/lib \
     --enable-libmp3lame \
     --enable-libvorbis \
     --enable-libtheora \
     --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl \
     --enable-libvpx \
     --enable-libxvid
 make

You will need to install (either the version built by your OS distributor if it’s new enough, or a custom-compiled one) the mentioned extra libraries so ffmpeg can make use of them.