Installation Instructions

The installation contains two main steps:

  1. Install VapourSynth core library.

  2. Install the Python wrapper of VapourSynth.

After you completed the second step, you can test it by opening a Python command line and type this:

from vapoursynth import core
print(core.version())

After pressing return at the final line, you should see the version printed along with a few other lines describing the options used when instantiating the Core object. In fact, these lines should be the same as the output result of vspipe --version.

Windows Installation Instructions

Prerequisites

First download and install the prerequisites:

  • Python 3.9.x – 32 or 64 bit version depending on which version of VapourSynth you want to install

Note that VapourSynth and Python have to be matched so both are either installed for all users or for only for the current user.

Also note that per user installs will not install the required Visual Studio 2019 runtimes.

Installation

Simply run the VapourSynth installer. It should automatically detect and install everything, including the Python wrapper.

If the tests mentioned at the beginning fails, there may be a bug in the installer or there are old copies of vapoursynth.pyd and vapoursynth.dll lying around.

Windows Portable Instructions

First download and decompress the prerequisites:

Simply decompress the portable VapourSynth archive into the Python dir and overwrite all existing files. Done.

You can also use the VapourSynth Editor by decompressing it into the same directory.

OS X Installation from Packages

First download and install the prerequisites:

  • Xcode – Available from the AppStore

  • Homebrew – A package manager

Simply run these commands in a terminal and wait for them to complete:

brew install vapoursynth

Linux Installation from Packages

Several distributions have VapourSynth packages. Note that those packages are usually OUT OF DATE.

Debian

The VapourSynth packages are provided by deb-multimedia repository. You need to add the repository first following the guide on the official website.

Fedora, CentOS and RHEL

For Fedora, the VapourSynth packages can be downloaded from official repository directly. For CentOS and RHEL, you should install EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository first.

Gentoo

There is an unofficial Portage tree with all VapourSynth related ebuilds. Check the Github link for more information and instructions.

Arch Linux

VapourSynth-related packages are provided by the Community repository.

Linux and OS X Compilation Instructions

These are the requirements:

  • Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool, probably recent versions

  • pkg-config

  • GCC 4.8 or newer, or Clang

  • zimg v3.0 branch

  • Python 3

  • Cython 0.28 or later installed in your Python 3 environment

  • Sphinx for the documentation (optional)

  • iconv, libass, and ffmpeg for the Subtext plugin (optional)

  • ImageMagick 7 for the Imwri plugin (optional)

  • Tesseract 3 for the OCR plugin (optional)

Note: any version of Python 3 will do. A specific version is only required when using the official Windows binaries.

Required packages (OS X)

First download and install the prerequisites:

  • Xcode – Available from the AppStore

  • Homebrew – A package manager

Installation of the required packages is very easy. Simply run these commands in a terminal and wait for them to complete:

brew install python3 ffmpeg libass zimg imagemagick
pip3 install cython

If you’ve already installed all the required packages and instead want to update them, simply run:

brew update && brew upgrade
pip3 install --upgrade cython

Compilation

If you haven’t checked out the source code before, use git to do so:

git clone https://github.com/vapoursynth/vapoursynth.git

Or if you already have a copy of the source, update it with:

git pull

Enter the VapourSynth directory and run these commands to compile and install:

./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install

Depending on your operating system’s configuration, VapourSynth may not work out of the box with the default prefix of /usr/local. Two errors may pop up when running vspipe --version:

  • “vspipe: error while loading shared libraries: libvapoursynth-script.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”

    This is caused by the non-standard location of libvapoursynth-script.so.0. Your dynamic loader is not configured to look in /usr/local/lib. One way to work around this error is to use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable:

    $ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib vspipe --version

  • “Failed to initialize VapourSynth environment”

    This is caused by the non-standard location of the Python module, vapoursynth.so. Your Python is not configured to look in /usr/local/lib/python3.x/site-packages. One way to work around this error is to use the PYTHONPATH environment variable:

    $ PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python3.x/site-packages vspipe --version

    Replace “x” with the correct number.

The documentation can be built using its own Makefile:

$ make -C doc/ html

The documentation can be installed using the standard program cp.

Install Python wrapper via pip (PyPI)

The Windows installer will install Python wrapper automatically. Some Linux distros (e.g. Fedora & CentOS series) also provide pre-built Python wrapper package. If you do not use them, you can install the Python wrapper using pip.

Install vapoursynth by using this command:

pip install VapourSynth

Please note that you need a working installation of VapourSynth beforehand. On non-Windows systems, the installer will compile the module before installing.