Is it possible to build ffmpeg x64 on Windows?

Question

The real answer is probably "no", but still, just to double check. Has anyone ever been able to build ffmpeg x64 on Windows (VS2013 or VS2015)? I know it is not possible with publicly available sources without heavy modifications. However, if somebody did it and if he is willing to share a few tips...

Edit: It is interesting how most of the required x64 tools for running the "configure" are distributed without dependencies and it is impossible to get them anywhere. Looks like a professional trolling.

Edit2: There are thousands of errors like this:

fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'features.h': No such file or directory

features.h is missing as many other header files. Is there a fix for that, or switching to Linux is the only option?

Answer 1

I used to compile ffmpeg on a linux machine with MinGW, but now I'm able to compile on a windows machine, in my case Windows 10.

NOTE: For me it only worked for ffmpeg versions >= 3.0 and I tested using VS 2013 and 2015

Few steps but very important:

Download and install (except YASM):

• Visual Studio 2013 or 2015
• YASM
• MSYS2

Steps:

1. Install MSYS2 to a fixed folder (eg.: C:\Dev\msys64)
2. Run msys2.exe
3. Execute command "pacman -S make gcc diffutils" and press "Y" to install
4. Close msys2
5. Rename C:\Dev\msys64\usr\bin\link.exe to some other name (eg.: msys2_link.exe)
6. Copy and rename "yasm--win64.exe" to "C:\Dev\yasm.exe"
7. Add "C:\Dev" to environment variables PATH
8. Run VS2013/2015 x86 (for x86) or x64 for (x64) Command Prompt
9. Execute "C:\Dev\msys64\msys2_shell.cmd -msys -use-full-path"
10. On the msys2 window execute "which cl" and you should see the path of your VS
11. Execute "which link" and you should also see the path of your VS
12. Go to the ffmpeg source path (eg.: "cd /c/ffmpeg3.3")
13. Run ./configure and make

I use this configuration:

./configure \
    --toolchain=msvc \
    --arch=x86_64 \
    --enable-yasm \
    --enable-asm\
    --enable-shared \
    --enable-w32threads \
    --disable-programs \
    --disable-ffserver \
    --disable-doc \
    --disable-static \
    --prefix=/c/ffmpeg3.3/DLLS

NOTE2: If you used the last line --prefix=/c/ffmpeg3.3/DLLS, as a final step, run make install and the binaries will be copied to that path

Hope it helped.

Best of luck

Answer 2

There is a How-to on the FFmpeg Page itself.It didn't work for me so far, but at least you should get rid of the C99 Errors and so on.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/MSVC

Maybe you try installing this stuff (I had to download pkg-config seperatly with Msys2 for it to work) and follow these steps.

Answer 3

Assuming with x64 you mean the standard 64-bit version, yes it is possible. See the fate page for all tested builds of FFmpeg, there's various 32- and 64-bit versions of Visual Studio in that list, including VS2013 and VS2015 64-bit. Search for "Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 18.00.40629 for x64" (or "19.00.24215.1") or "VS2013"/"VS2015", all the way at the bottom. For exact build options, see here for 2013 or here for 2015. The important part is to open a Windows shell with the 64-bit commandline build tools in your $PATH and open a msys shell from there, and then run configure using the --arch=x86_64 --target-os=win64 --toolchain=msvc options. For more detail, see the MSVC compilation wiki page.

Answer 4

No, it cannot be done. MS compiler doesn't support #include_next. Plus, many other problems... You need MinGW.