To use :py:mod:`ffmpegio`, the package must be installed on Python as well as having the FFmpeg binary files at a location :py:mod:`ffmpegio` can find. In addition, optional external packages can be installed to enable the ffmpegio features that interact with them.

Install the :py:mod:`ffmpegio` package via pip.

pip install ffmpegio

There are two Python libraries to install FFmpeg for the use in Python:

The installation of FFmpeg is platform dependent. One platform agnostic approach is to use our sister package: ffmpeg-downloader.

First, install the ffmpegio-downloader package, then run its cli command ffdl:

pip install ffmpeg-downloader
ffdl install

If you wish to use the FFmpeg outside of ffmpegio, you can also install and add the installed directory to the user's system path (only for Windows and MacOS).

# optionally
ffdl install --add-path

At a later date, you could re-run ffdl to look for an update (similar to pip): I .. code-block:

ffdl install -U

sudo apt install ffmpeg

brew install ffmpeg

It is a bit more complicated in Windows.

1. Download pre-built packages from the links available on the FFmpeg's Download page.

2. Unzip the content and place the files in one of the following directories:

   Auto-detectable FFmpeg folder path	Example
   %PROGRAMFILES%\ffmpeg	C:\Program Files\ffmpeg
   %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\ffmpeg	C:\Program Files (x86)\ffmpeg
   %USERPROFILE%\ffmpeg	C:\Users\john\ffmpeg
   %APPDATA%\ffmpeg	C:\Users\john\AppData\Roaming\ffmpeg
   %APPDATA%\programs\ffmpeg	C:\Users\john\AppData\Roaming\programs\ffmpeg
   %LOCALAPPDATA%\ffmpeg	C:\Users\john\AppData\Local\ffmpeg
   %LOCALAPPDATA%\programs\ffmpeg	C:\Users\john\AppData\Local\programs\ffmpeg

   Keep the internal structure intact, i.e., the executables must be found at ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe and ffmpeg\bin\ffprobe.exe.

   There are two other alternative. First, the FFmpeg binaries could be placed on the Python's current working directory (i.e., os.getcwd()). Second, they could be placed in an arbitrary location and use :py:func:`ffmpegio.set_path` to specify the location. The latter feature is especially useful when ffmpegio is bundled in a package (e.g., PyInstaller).