Build MPV and FFmpeg with JACK+portaudio+ASIO support on Windows

C-Play depends on the great mpv media player library, which indeed depends on the great ffmpeg library. It is usually straight-forward to build in many ways, but normally we want to modify the standard build by including JACK, to go from maximum 8-channel audio support, to support ASIO and other low-latency audio frameworks. Choose one of the two below options. After building, check further below for creating a linkable library.

Option 1: Build mpv and ffmpeg with m-ab-s

As of writing (2024-11-20) this build setup includes mpv 0.36 and then option to specify and ffmpeg version under that.

This compilation takes much more time(as you are checking out all sources from git of ffmpeg dependencies), but has easier and more flexible configuration options.

This guide assumes you use Media Build Suite to get a free setup of MSYS64 and the dependencies to build ffmpeg and mpv.

Run the batch script after unzipping it in a short path, but quit after MSYS has been setup (i.e. do not run the configure yet)

Run msys2 installed during “Media Build Suite” setup.

  • Option 1: Perform step 1.1 above to include ASIO into portaudio, and build Jack2*

If not doing Option 1, simply install jack2 (see below).

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-jack2

  • Change the MPV git path from master to release 0.36 (latest one with bootstrap.py), by opening the file build\media-suite_deps.sh and replace in line 73 “https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv.git” with “https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv.git#release/0.36”.

  • My setup: Just copy over these FFmpeg Options, MPV Options and Media Build Suite Configuration to the build folder. The latest FFmpeg 5.1 will be used in this configuration.
    • Alternatively, do not copy over these files, but during configuration, disable as many encoder as possible, as we want focus on decoding for the player. Also, choose to build ffmpeg with shared libs only, do not strip build files. When asked to edit the FFmpeg options file, add “–enable-libjack” to the configuration file.

  • Run “Media Build Suite” batch script again, and do not remove the JACK package when asked. Continue and compile everything.

  • Create an environmental variable called “PKG_CONFIG_PATH” and add the path “(Media Build Suite location)\local64\lib\pkgconfig”. Also add the “(Media Build Suite location)\local64\bin-video” to your environmental “Path”.

1.1 (Optional) Build JACK PortAudio with ASIO support

Download the ASIO SDK Extract the zip to two identical folder named MSYS64_INSTALL_ROOT\opt\asiosdkstatic and MSYS64_INSTALL_ROOT\opt\asiosdkshared.

cd MINGW-packages/mingw-w64-portaudio

edit the PKGBUILD file, to so that the build sections has this:

build() {
  export lt_cv_deplibs_check_method='pass_all'

  [[ -d "build-static-${MINGW_CHOST}" ]] && rm -rf "build-static-${MINGW_CHOST}"
  mkdir -p "${srcdir}/build-static-${MINGW_CHOST}"
  cd "${srcdir}/build-static-${MINGW_CHOST}"

  ../${_realname}/configure \
    --prefix=${MINGW_PREFIX} \
    --build=${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --host=${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --target=${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --disable-shared \
    --enable-static \
    --with-dxdir=${MINGW_PREFIX}/${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --with-winapi=wmme,directx,wasapi,wdmks,asio \
    --with-asiodir=/opt/asiosdkstatic

  make

  [[ -d "build-shared-${MINGW_CHOST}" ]] && rm -rf "build-shared-${MINGW_CHOST}"
  mkdir -p "${srcdir}/build-shared-${MINGW_CHOST}"
  cd "${srcdir}/build-shared-${MINGW_CHOST}"

  ../${_realname}/configure \
    --prefix=${MINGW_PREFIX} \
    --build=${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --host=${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --target=${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --enable-shared \
    --with-dxdir=${MINGW_PREFIX}/${MINGW_CHOST} \
    --with-winapi=wmme,directx,wasapi,wdmks,asio \
    --with-asiodir=/opt/asiosdkshared

  make
}

package() {
  cd "${srcdir}/build-static-${MINGW_CHOST}"
  make DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install

  cd "${srcdir}/build-shared-${MINGW_CHOST}"
  make DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install
}

The run these commands to build and install jack2 + portaudio with the ASIO support configured. Recommend using the UCRT64 environment instead of MINGW64.

pacman -S binutils base-devel mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc
updpkgsums
makepkg-mingw -sCLf
pacman -U mingw-w64-*-portaudio-*-any.pkg.tar.zst

Then let’s update the jack2 package to use our custom portaudio package.

cd MINGW-packages/mingw-w64-jack2
updpkgsums
makepkg-mingw -sCLf
pacman -U mingw-w64-*-jack2-*-any.pkg.tar.zst

Go to point last section below to create library for compiling

Option 2: Build mpv and ffmpeg from MINGW-packages

As of writing (2024-11-20) this is mpv 0.39 and ffmpeg 7.1.

This is easiest if you want the latest libraries. However, Option 1 has more control, and a such can maximize performance in C-Play for specific configurations.

Here are the steps:

Download MSYS from official website. Install and the run mingw64.exe.

Then clone “https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages” into your mingw64 home folder.

git clone "https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages"

2.1 (Optional) Build PortAudio with ASIO support

Follow the guide 1.1 in Option 1…

2.2 Build FFmpeg with custom options (supporting jack2, nvdec etc)

FFmpeg is highly customizable, but here are the preferred settings for using it with C-Play.

cd MINGW-packages/mingw-w64-ffmpeg

Edit the PKGBUILD file to include ${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-jack2 and –enable-libjack. Also preferred to include missing –enable-nvdec after –enable-nvenc. Here are my mingw-w64-ffmpeg-pkgbuild configuration file.

Then install dependencies for packing and perform the new packing: Recommend using the UCRT64 environment instead of MINGW64.

pacman -S binutils base-devel mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc
updpkgsums
makepkg-mingw -sCLf

If you get a problem with the public key during the packing, run this:

gpg --recv-key <KEYID>
gpg --lsign <KEYID>

After packing, run:

pacman -U mingw-w64-*-ffmpeg-*-any.pkg.tar.zst

2.3 Build MPV with custom options.

When your happy with the ffmpeg build, let’s do the mpv build. We want shared library so you need to change the PKGBUILD here as well. CD to mingw-w64-mpv, then add the line below (before -Dlibmpv=true).

-Ddefault_library=shared \

Here are my mingw-w64-mpv-pkgbuild configuration file.

After packing, according to the same steps as for ffmpeg above, run:

pacman -U mingw-w64-*-mpv-*-any.pkg.tar.zst

Create an environmental variable called “PKG_CONFIG_PATH” and add the path “MSYS64_INSTALL_ROOT\ucrt64\lib\pkgconfig”. Also add the “MSYS64_INSTALL_ROOT\ucrt64\bin to your environmental “Path”.

After MPV compiliation, linking mpv with MSVC programs

As according to the Native compilation with MSYS2 you need to create a import library for the mpv DLL. Launch a Visual Studio command prompt (latest 2022 or later), and cd to the bin directory where mpv-2.dll is located. Then create the library with you need a definition file (.def).

If you have a mpv.def file(Option 2 normally gives that), you can already do this:

lib /def:mpv.def /name:mpv-2.dll /out:mpv.lib /MACHINE:X64

If the build hasn’t generated one (normally it does not), we need to generate one. Install gendef, as part of -tools and then generate the definition file.

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-tools

cd M-AB-S/local64/bin-video
gendef - mpv-2.dll > mpv.def

or

cd MSYS64_INSTALL_ROOT/mingw64/bin/
gendef - libmpv-2.dll > libmpv.def

With the new libmpv.def file, generate the lib by running the command below in a Visual Studio 2022 Developer Command Prompt:

lib /def:mpv.def /name:mpv-2.dll /out:mpv.lib /MACHINE:X64

or

lib /def:libmpv.def /name:libmpv-2.dll /out:mpv.lib /MACHINE:X64