1 INSTALL file for the Windows9x/Me/NT4/2k/XP 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 NOTE: This is the PREFERRED way of building VLC natively (the others
30 are not as much tested so expect more difficulties with them).
32 Read http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32CompileCygwinNew to have a complete HOWTO
34 - On GNU/Linux, using the mingw32 cross-compiler.
35 This method is preferred over all the others.
39 - natively on Windows, using MSYS+MINGW (www.mingw.org)
40 (MSYS is a minimal build environment to compile Unixish projects under
41 windoze. It provides all the common Unix tools like sh, gmake...)
42 Please note that the gettext utilities are not included in the default
43 MSYS/MINGW packages so you won't be able to build VLC with i18n support.
45 - natively on Windows, using Microsoft Visual Studio. This will not work.
47 Getting the right compiler tools
48 ================================
50 - cross-compiling with mingw32:
51 You first need to download a GNU/Linux cross-compiler version of mingw32.
53 For Debian GNU/Linux users, you can use the mingw32, mingw32-binutils and
54 mingw32-runtime packages.
56 - compiling natively on Windows with cygwin:
57 You will need to download and run the setup.exe app from cygwin's web site
58 (www.cygwin.com). You will also need to make sure you install at least the
59 gcc-g++, gcc-mingw, mingw-runtime and win32-api packages.
61 - compiling natively on Windows with MSYS+MINGW:
62 You will need to download and install the latest MSYS, MSYS-DTK and MINGW.
63 The installation is really easy. Begin with the MSYS auto-installer and once
64 this is done, extract MINGW into c:\msys\1.0\mingw. You also have to remember
65 to remove the make utility included with MINGW as it conflicts with the one
66 from MSYS (just rename or remove c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\make.exe).
68 http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
69 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe
70 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe
71 http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe
73 Getting the additional libraries
74 =================================
76 VLC depends on other libraries to provide some features like ac3 audio decoding
77 or mpeg4 video decoding, etc...
79 Depending on your needs you will have to compile/install some or all of these
82 * They can be found here (source code):
83 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/contrib/
85 * We also provide a package with all the libraries already compiled so it is
86 actually really easy to compile a full-featured version of vlc (these compiled
87 libraries will only work with mingw or cygwin):
88 http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/win32/contrib-20060330-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2
89 (Check out for more recent versions at the same location).
91 All you need to do is extract it in your root directory (the include files
92 and libraries will be put in /usr/win32). You can do this with the following
95 tar xjvf contrib-20060330-win32-bin-gcc-3.4.5-only.tar.bz2 -C /
97 Please note the "-C /".
99 * An automated way of building the contrib libraries is provided in
100 extra/contrib. It will download, configure and build the libraries.
101 See the extras/contrib/README for more info.
103 A complete list of the libraries on which we depend can be found here:
104 http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/
106 Configuring the build
107 =====================
109 Once you've got all the files you need in place, you need to configure the
110 build with the `./configure' script.
112 I'll assume that you are using the pre-compiled 3rd party libraries we are
113 providing and that they are in /usr/win32.
115 If you are cross-compiling from Debian, you can use something
119 PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
120 PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
121 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
122 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
123 CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ \
124 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i386-linux \
126 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
127 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
128 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
129 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
130 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
131 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
132 --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
133 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
134 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
135 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
136 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
137 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
140 If you are using cygwin, you can build VLC with or without the POSIX
141 emulation layer. Without is usually better and with POSIX emulation
142 hasn't been tested in about a year or so. So to build without the
143 emulation layer, use something like this:
146 PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
147 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
148 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
149 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
150 CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" \
153 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
154 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
155 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
156 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
157 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
158 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
159 --enable-live555 --with-live555-tree=/usr/win32/live.com \
160 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
161 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
162 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
163 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
164 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
167 If you want to use the emulation layer, then just omit the CC="gcc -mno-cygwin"
168 CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin" line. You're on your own though.
170 If you are compiling with MSYS/MINGW, then you can use something along those
173 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/win32/lib/pkgconfig \
174 PATH=/usr/win32/bin:$PATH \
175 CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/win32/include -I/usr/win32/include/ebml" \
176 LDFLAGS=-L/usr/win32/lib \
179 --enable-nls --enable-sdl --with-sdl-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
180 --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame --with-ffmpeg-faac \
181 --with-ffmpeg-zlib --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
182 --with-wx-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
183 --with-freetype-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
184 --with-fribidi-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
185 --enable-caca --with-caca-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
186 --with-xml2-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
187 --with-dvdnav-config-path=/usr/win32/bin \
188 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
189 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
193 If you have used the "extras/contrib" way, you don't need to precise
194 the CFLAGS, LDFLAGS and --with-foo-config-path=.
198 --enable-nls --enable-sdl \
199 --enable-ffmpeg --enable-faad --enable-flac --enable-theora \
200 --disable-cddax --disable-vcdx --enable-goom \
201 --enable-twolame --enable-dvdread \
202 --enable-mkv --enable-caca --enable-live555\
206 See `./configure --help' for more information.
208 Actually Compiling the VLC source
209 =================================
211 Once configured, to build VLC, just run `make'.
213 Once the compilation is done, you can either run VLC directly from the source
214 tree or you can build self-contained VLC packages with the following
217 make package-win32-base
218 will create a subdirectory named vlc-x.x.x with all the binaries
219 'stripped' (ie. without any debugging symbols).
221 make package-win32-zip
222 Same as above but will package the directory in a zip file.
225 Same as above but will also create an auto-installer package. You will need
226 to have NSIS installed in its default location for this to work.
228 Well done, now you're ready to use VLC!
229 =======================================