1 INSTALL file for the Windows 2k/XP/Vista version of the VLC media player
7 If you have already built VLC (see below) or are using a binary release,
10 You can also run VLC from a dos command box, in which case you'll be able
11 to use the command line arguments. You can obtain a list of these command
12 line arguments by typing 'vlc --help' or 'vlc --help --advanced'.
14 To store a debug log of the current VLC session, you can use
15 'vlc -vv --extraintf=logger'. You will end-up with a vlc-log.txt file in
16 your current directory.
18 Additional documentation is available at http://www.videolan.org/doc/
21 Building VLC from the source code
22 =================================
24 If you want to build VLC from sources, you can do it in several ways:
26 - natively on Windows, using cygwin (www.cygwin.com) with or without the
27 POSIX emulation layer. This is the preferred way to compile vlc if you want
29 Read http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32CompileCygwinNew to have a complete HOWTO
31 - On GNU/Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
32 This method is preferred over all the others.
36 - natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
37 (MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under
38 windoze. It provides all the common Unix tools like sh, gmake...)
39 Please note that the gettext utilities are not included in the default
40 MSYS/MINGW packages so you won't be able to build VLC with i18n support.
42 - natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual Studio. This will not work.
44 Getting the right compiler tools
45 ================================
47 - cross-compiling with mingw32:
48 You first need to download a GNU/Linux cross-compiler version of mingw32.
50 For Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
51 mingw32-runtime packages.
52 For Fedora users, you can use mingw-binutils, mingw-gcc-core, mingw-gcc-g++
54 - compiling natively on Windows with cygwin:
55 You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
56 (www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
57 gcc-g++, gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and win32-api packages.
59 - compiling natively on Windows with MSYS+MINGW:
60 You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
61 The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
62 this is done, extract MINGW into c:\msys\1.0\mingw. You also have to remember
63 to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one
64 from MSYS (just rename or remove c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\make.exe).
66 http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
67 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe
68 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe
69 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
71 Getting the additional libraries
72 =================================
74 VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
75 or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
77 Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
80 * We also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
81 actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
82 libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
83 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20060330-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2
84 (Check out for more recent versions at the same location).
86 All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
87 and libraries will be put in /usr/win32). You can do this with the following
90 tar xjvf contrib-20060330-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2 -C /
92 Please note the "-C /".
94 * They can also be found here (source code):
95 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
97 * An automated way of building the contrib libraries is provided in
98 extra/contrib. It will download, configure and build the libraries.
99 See the extras/contrib/README for more info.
101 A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
102 http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
104 Configuring the build
105 =====================
107 Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
108 build with the `./configure' script.
110 I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries we are
111 providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
113 If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
117 PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
118 PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
119 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
120 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
121 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
122 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
124 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
125 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
126 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
127 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
128 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
129 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
130 --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
131 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
132 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
133 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
134 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
135 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
138 If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the POSIX
139 emulation layer. Without is usually better and with POSIX emulation
140 hasn't been tested in about a year or so. So to build without the
141 emulation layer, use something like this:
144 PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
145 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
146 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
147 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
148 CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
151 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
152 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
153 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
154 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
155 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
156 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
157 --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
158 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
159 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
160 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
161 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
162 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
165 If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
166 CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line. You're on your own though.
168 If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
171 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
172 PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
173 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
174 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
177 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
178 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
179 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
180 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
181 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
182 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
183 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
184 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
185 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
186 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
187 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
191 If you have used the "extras/contrib" way, you don't need to precise
192 the CFLAGS, LDFLAGS and --with-foo-config-path=.
196 --enable-nls --enable-sdl \
197 --enable-ffmpeg --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
198 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
199 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
200 --enable-mkv --enable-caca --enable-live555\
204 See `./configure --help' for more information.
206 Actually Compiling the VLC source
207 =================================
209 Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
211 Once the compilation is done, you can either run VLC directly from the source
212 tree or you can build self-contained VLC packages with the following
215 make package-win32-base
216 will create a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries
217 'stripped' (ie. without any debugging symbols).
219 make package-win32-zip
220 Same as above but will package the directory in a zip file.
223 Same as above but will also create an auto-installer package. You will need
224 to have NSIS installed in its default location for this to work.
226 Well done, now you're ready to use VLC!
227 =======================================