Nucleate
Setup & compatibility
FFmpeg/FFprobe

Installing FFmpeg for Nucleate

Prerequisites

  • Operating System: Windows or macOS
  • Administrator privileges to install binaries and update your PATH
  • Optional but recommended: verify that your machine meets the hardware requirements for local transcription & summarization.

Auto installation

On both Windows and macOS, Nucleate will attempt to automatically install Ollama and FFmpeg during first time startup. The installation process is pretty quiet on Windows, but macOS has a few special notes. Do not be afraid!

ℹ️
macOS requires an admin account to install FFmpeg. The recommended approach is to install via Nucleate startup sequence. During startup, Nucleate will launch a terminal window with “sudo” request to install Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager for macOS, like “pip” for Python. Once installed, Nucleate will automatically grab Ollama (if not already installed) and FFmpeg.

Manual installation Instructions

Windows

  1. Download the latest FFmpeg static build for Windows from https://ffmpeg.org/download.html.
  2. Extract the ZIP to a folder of your choice (e.g., C:\ffmpeg).
  3. Add the bin folder to your system PATH: 4. Open Start → Search “Environment Variables” → Edit the system environment variables.
    5. Click Environment Variables…
    6. Under System variables, select Path → Edit → New
    7. Add the full path to the bin folder (e.g., C:\ffmpeg\bin)
    8. Click OK to save changes.
  4. Open a new Command Prompt and run:
ffmpeg -version
ffprobe -version

macOS (recommended)

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Install via Homebrew (recommended):
# Install Homebrew if not already installed (skip if you have it)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Installing Homebrew may require sudo and your password. Follow the terminal prompts.

# Install FFmpeg
brew install ffmpeg

# Verify installation
ffmpeg -version
ffprobe -version

# Optional: confirm PATH detection
which ffmpeg
which ffprobe

macOS (manual installation)

  1. If you prefer not to use Homebrew, download a static build of FFmpeg for your CPU architecture:
  2. Apple Silicon (arm64 / M1/M2): https://www.osxexperts.net/
  3. Intel macOS (x86_64): https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/ (legacy, not supported)
  4. Download the ZIPs for both ffmpeg and ffprobe and extract them.
  5. Move the ffmpeg and ffprobe binaries to a folder on your PATH (.e.g., /usr/local/bin). You may need sudo:
sudo mv ffmpeg ffprobe /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/ffprobe
  1. Open a new Terminal and verify:
ffmpeg -version
ffprobe -version
ℹ️
If FFmpeg is installed correctly, Nucleate will detect it automatically — no app restart or configuration required.
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