What is FFmpeg  and how can I install it?

FFmpeg are free and open source tools to process videos, create and modify them. They are very fast and used by many applications and websites worldwide.

Live Class Composite uses this tool to enhance the application features offering a way to export interactive composites merging video and images, FFmpeg is called by our application to perform this tasks and you only have to make sure to have this tool installed in your computer to be able to use this extra features.
Most probably they are already in your computer and you only have to tell Live Class Composite the path to the executable.

How do I know if FFmpeg is already installed?

If you are using Mac OS X please start Terminal (you will find it at Applications – Utilities) and at the opening command line window input ffmpeg and press Enter.

In case you are using Windows please right click at the Windows start button and select Powershell (or Cmd if you are using an older Windows version), at the opening command line window input ffmpeg and press Enter.

If FFmpeg is already installed you will get an answer like the one shown at right.

Downloading and installing FFmpeg for Windows

At FFmpeg official site you will links to download this tool:  https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html A Windows icon can be seen there, please hover the mouse on it and you will get a new line with a link for the official downloads, click at it.

you only need the version Release Essentials.

Please find enclosed a direct link for your convenience:

https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-git-essentials.7z

Unzip this file, if you don’t have the tool to do this please download it from https://www.7-zip.org/

Once unzipped you will find a subfolder named bin and in this folder an executable named ffmpeg.exe, copy this file into the folder of your preference (for sample you may create an FFmpeg folder in your main drive and put it there lie C:\FFmpeg\ffmpeg.exe ).

Downloading and installing in Mac OS X

Usually this tool is already installed in your Mac, therefore please take a moment to check it as explained above.

Otherwise you may download if from the official web https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html , hover the mouse on the Mac OS X icon and you’ll get a new line showing the links for the static compiled versions for Mac OS X.

Please find enclosed a direct link for your convenience: https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/

On this site you will find several files for downloading, select one at top and click at downloading as zip.

Once downloaded unzip the file to get the binary ffmpeg. Copy it into the folder of your preference, may be in Applications?

Now please start it to make sure it works, open Terminal and drag the binary file into the Terminal prompt, then press Enter.

Security restrictions from Apple won’t allow you to open this file and will advise you to remove it to bin (don’t remove it), just open System preferences – Privacy and Security – General and you will find a warning message about not allowing to open this file, click at Open anyway. Now come back to terminal and retry (this time you should be lucky).

Last steps, setting the path in Live Class Composite

As you may assume it’s not possible for Live Class Composite to guess the path where you have installed FFmpeg and you have to set it, if you are using Mac probably it was already installed and the application may have found it but otherwise you will have to search the path.

To do this please open Live Class Composite preferences at the main menu and click at the icon to select the folder where FFmpeg is, search the folder and select the binary file. The complete path will be shown at the Preferences window.

If you are using Mac OS X most probably FFmpeg is already installed into a hidden folder, if you want to enable viewing hidden folders at the pat dialog please press Shift + Cmd + Period.

Each time you start Live Class Composite the application will check if the tool is still in the same path.

Why is the tool not included and installed with the software?

Live Class Composite uses the application FFmpeg in the same way Auto Class Composite uses Photoshop but we are not the developers or owners of FFmpeg, neither are we from Photoshop, and as you may assume we can’t distribute a software that is not ours, but we may use it if it is already installed in users computer.

FFmpeg’s license is LGPL and partially GPL:

FFmpeg is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 or later. However, FFmpeg incorporates several optional parts and optimizations that are covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later. If those parts get used the GPL applies to all of FFmpeg.

For more details please visit https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html