Build instructions for ffmpeg

The OVITO package includes binary versions of the ffmpeg libraries licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPLv2.1). In accordance with the requirements of this license, this page provides instructions on how to rebuild compatible versions of these libraries from source code.

Windows

OVITO for Windows includes binaries that have been built from the unmodified sources of ffmpeg 9.0.1. The following commands have been used to generate them:

# Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 (command line tools) + MSYS2 environment
./configure \
  --toolchain=msvc \
  --target-os=win64 \
  --arch=x86_64 \
  --disable-programs \
  --disable-static \
  --enable-shared \
  --prefix=../../ffmpeg \
  --disable-zlib \
  --disable-bzlib \
  --disable-doc \
  --disable-network \
  --disable-debug \
  --disable-decoders \
  --disable-indevs \
  --disable-sdl2 \
  --disable-libxcb \
  --disable-libxcb-shm \
  --disable-libxcb-xfixes \
  --disable-libxcb-shape \
  --disable-iconv
make install

Linux

OVITO for Linux includes shared libraries that have been built from the unmodified sources of ffmpeg 9.0.1. The following commands have been used to generate them:

./configure \
    --enable-pic \
    --enable-shared \
    --disable-static \
    --disable-doc \
    --disable-network \
    --disable-programs \
    --disable-debug \
    --disable-decoders \
    --disable-indevs \
    --disable-libxcb \
    --disable-libxcb-shm \
    --disable-libxcb-xfixes \
    --disable-libxcb-shape \
    --disable-bzlib \
    --disable-zlib \
    --disable-xlib \
    --disable-iconv \
    --disable-sdl2 \
    --disable-libdrm \
    --disable-vaapi \
    --disable-vdpau \
    --disable-vulkan \
    --disable-v4l2-m2m
make install

The hardware acceleration back-ends are turned off because OVITO only uses ffmpeg’s software encoders. Disabling them also removes the resulting libraries’ dependency on libdrm.

macOS

OVITO for macOS includes shared libraries that have been built from the unmodified sources of ffmpeg 9.0.1. The following commands have been used to generate them:

git clone https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg_source
cd ffmpeg_source
git checkout n9.0.1
./configure \
  --disable-network \
  --disable-programs \
  --disable-debug \
  --disable-doc \
  --disable-static \
  --disable-decoders \
  --disable-indevs \
  --disable-sdl2 \
  --disable-libxcb \
  --disable-libxcb-shm \
  --disable-libxcb-xfixes \
  --disable-libxcb-shape \
  --disable-iconv \
  --disable-bzlib \
  --disable-zlib \
  --disable-xlib \
  --enable-shared
make install