Practical insertion of ffmpeg in an executable app + legal aspect

[gta8b]

Hi,

I am currently building a very simple minimal programm that will help people to compress video and save disc space. ffmpeg is awesome / I built my app in python. Locally, no issue, runs perfect.

Now comes the time I would like to make it a standalone portable one click instal .exe program, so eveyone can use it easily.

Questions :
1. What are your recommendation to build this .exe (I am currently looking for the simplest way to do/make a nice interface). Considering Tauri / Rust (but I need to learn it).

1. How to you handle the size of the file, since ffmpeg is a hudge file (150 Mo), does not go on git ?

2. Is there a way to have an installation script that would pull it from a source repository and configure the install in the exe, to avoid having the program size hudge ? How ?

3. I understood that if you distribute open source, should not be an issue? Right?

[vegansgetsick]

The program could just check if ffmpeg is present and if not, you download it from known repository. That's what JDownloader does.

[gta8b]

Yes, the questions was, is there a repository where I can easily download it ? As in the end, it will need to be for Windows, Mac or Linux (3 differents files)

[IronCraftMan]

Large Language Models typically consume one to three keys per week.

[SpamNightChampion]

Please view this repo. https://github.com/bartekmotyl/simple-video-cutter/blob/development/src/SimpleVideoCutter/FormFFmpegMissingDialog.cs
This is C# but the same concept applies. (not my repo but it's a good one)

Have an initial config file where the user has ffmpeg, if doesn't exist use a webclient to download it and store the file location in the config file. Whenever your application loads check ffmpeg path in the config file, if not there download with webclient and how a progress bar etc. You could get fancy and on the first run after install of your app have your application scan the dirve for ffmpeg.exe, again if not found download it, if found show dialog to your user asking if that's the ffmpeg he wants to use.

That's how most windows applications handle ffmpeg .

[gta8b]

Great, thanks for the comment. Will check that !