Getting Started

Introduction

Welcome to VideoAlchemy! This guide will walk you through the installation process and help you set up your first video processing tasks. Follow these steps to get started quickly.

Installation Requirements

Before installing VideoAlchemy, ensure your system meets the following requirements:

FFmpeg: VideoAlchemy uses FFmpeg as the core processing engine. You need to have FFmpeg installed on your system.
- Visit the FFmpeg download page for installation instructions specific to your operating system.
- macOS: You can use Homebrew to install FFmpeg:
```
brew install ffmpeg
```
- Linux: For Debian-based distributions, install FFmpeg with:
```
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
```

Installing VideoAlchemy

To install VideoAlchemy on your system, follow the steps below based on your platform:

macOS and Linux (via script)

Open your terminal.
Run the following command to install VideoAlchemy:

version=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/viddotech/videoalchemy/releases/latest | grep -oP '"tag_name": "\K(.*)(?=")') && curl -o setup.sh "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viddotech/videoalchemy/main/scripts/setup.sh" && chmod +x setup.sh && sudo ./setup.sh "$version" && rm -rf setup.sh

This script will download and install the latest version of VideoAlchemy.

Alpine Linux

If you’re using Alpine Linux, you can follow the same steps as above. The installation script is compatible with Alpine without the need for zsh or fish shells.

From Source

Alternatively, you can clone the VideoAlchemy repository and build the tool from the source:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/viddotech/videoalchemy.git

Navigate to the project directory:
```
cd videoalchemy
```
Build the tool:
```
make build
```
After building, you can move the binary to your system’s $PATH to use it globally.

Verifying the Installation

Once VideoAlchemy is installed, you can verify the installation by running:

videoalchemy --version

This command will display the installed version of VideoAlchemy.

Next Steps

After installation, you're ready to start processing videos with VideoAlchemy! To begin:

Create a YAML file with your video tasks.
Run the following command to execute your tasks:
```
videoalchemy compose -f viddo-compose.yaml
```
Check out the Guides section for detailed examples and use cases.