Overview

This is a collection of scripts to make downloading and building mpv, ffmpeg and libass easier. ffmpeg and libass get special treatment, because they are essential, and distribution packages are often too old or too broken.

See below for instructions for building Debian packages.

If you are running Mac OSX and using homebrew we provide homebrew-mpv, an up to date formula that compiles mpv with sensible dependencies and defaults for OSX.

Instructions

Make sure git is installed. E.g. on Debian or Ubuntu:

apt-get install git

Also check that the dependencies listed at in the next section are installed.

Checkout the build repo:

git clone https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-build.git

cd mpv-build

Get the ffmpeg, libass and mpv sources and build them with:

./rebuild -j4

The -j4 asks it to use 4 parallel processes.

Note that this command implicitly does an update followed by a full cleanup (even if nothing changes), which is supposed to reduce possible problems with incremental builds. You can do incremental builds by explicitly calling ./build. This can be faster on minor updates, but breaks sometimes, e.g. the FFmpeg build system can sometimes be a bit glitchy.

Install mpv with:

sudo ./install

mpv doesn't need to be installed. The binary ./mpv/build/mpv can be used as-is. Note that libass and ffmpeg will be statically linked with mpv when using the provided scripts, and no ffmpeg or libass libraries are/need to be installed.

Dependencies

Essential dependencies (incomplete list):

• gcc or clang, yasm, git
• X development headers (xlib, X extensions, vdpau, GL, Xv, ...)
• Audio output development headers (libasound, pulseaudio)
• fribidi, freetype, fontconfig development headers (for libass)
• libjpeg
• libquvi if you want to play Youtube videos directly
• libx264/libmp3lame/libfdk-aac if you want to use encoding (you have to add these options explicitly to the ffmpeg options, as ffmpeg won't autodetect these libraries; see next section)

Note: most dependencies are optional and autodetected. If they're missing, these features will be disabled silently. This includes some dependencies which could be considered essential.

Enabling optional ffmpeg dependencies

ffmpeg doesn't autodetect many dependencies. Instead, it requires you to enable them explicitly at configuration time. (And it will simply fail if the dependencies are not available.)

You can put additional ffmpeg configure flags into ffmpeg_options. For example, to enable some dependencies needed for encoding:

echo --enable-libx264 >> ffmpeg_options

echo --enable-libmp3lame >> ffmpeg_options

echo --enable-libfdk-aac >> ffmpeg_options

echo --enable-nonfree >> ffmpeg_options

(Do this in the mpv-build toplevel directory, the same that contains the build scripts and this readme file.)

Installing dependencies on Debian or Ubuntu

On Debian or Ubuntu systems, you can try to run this command in the mpv-build directory to install most of the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get install devscripts

mk-build-deps -s sudo -ir

This will generate and install a dummy package with the required dependencies. (mk-build-deps is part of devscripts.)

If you don't want to use sudo, you can also try:

mk-build-deps

dpkg -i mpv-build-deps_1.0_all.deb

dpkg -i will require root rights of course.

Building a Debian package

You can build a full mpv Debian package with the following command:

debuild -uc -us -b -j4

The .deb file will be created in the parent directory. (4 is the number of jobs running in parallel - you can change it.)

Local changes to the git repositories

Making local changes to the created git repositories is generally discouraged. Updating might remove local changes or conflict with them. Sometimes the repositories might be wiped entirely. If you make local changes, always keep them in a separate repository and merge them after updating.

In general, changes to the mpv-build repository itself are relatively safe, keeping branches in sub-repositories might be ok, and making local, uncommitted changes in sub-repositories will break.

Forcing master versions of all parts

The following command can be used to delete all local changes, and to checkout the current master versions for all parts (libass, ffmpeg, mpv, as well as mpv-build itself):

./update --master

All local modifications are overwritten (including changes to the scripts), and git master versions are checked out. Breakages/bugs are to be expected, because these are untested bleeding-edge development versions of the code.

Use on your own risk.

(Note: in earlier mpv-build revisions, the script force-head did this.)

Contact

You can find us on IRC in #mpv-player on irc.freenode.net

Report bugs to the issues tracker provided by GitHub to send us bug reports or feature requests.