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Installing MLT rendering engine

You can download the latests official release of MLT from http://mltframework.org.

But it is recommended to use the latest development version which contains bug fixes. This page explain how to compile and install this version from the source code. If you just want to use the latest MLT component but keep an official Kdenlive released, please read this: http://kevin.deldycke.com/2010/11/latest-stable-kdenlive-development-ver...

Remove MLT previous installation

You should uninstall previous versions of MLT very carefully. Warning: to remove MLT, you will need to connect under root account. There is a risk to destroy your operating system if you remove the wrong files.

  • Use your package installer to remove any mlt* and libmlt* packages.
  • Inspect /usr/local/lib and /usr/lib directories and look for mlt* and libmlt*. Remove files and directories if any.
  • Remove pkgconfig files (mlt-framework.pc, mlt-miracle.pc and mlt-valerie.pc). Remove the following files: /usr/lib/pkgconfig/libmlt*, /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/libmlt*.

Install dependencies

Make sure you have the following packages installed:

  • libxml2-dev
  • libsdl-dev
  • libsdl-image-dev
  • libavdevice-dev
  • libswscale-dev
  • libvorbis-dev
  • libsamplerate-dev
  • frei0r-plugins-dev (must notbe installed you compiled frei0r from source)
  • libdv-dev
  • libavformat-dev
  • libquicktime-dev

We also recommand that you install:

  • libsox-dev
  • libjack-dev
  • ladspa-sdk

Get latest MLT source code

Git is used to track MLT code. You can checkout the latest version with the following command:

cd
git clone git://mltframework.org/mlt.git
cd mlt

To update your MLT copy later, you need to go into your mlt folder and run the following code to fetch the newest source code:

cd
cd mlt
git pull

Configure MLT

Before compiling, MLT needs to be configured (searches for libraries etc.):

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-gpl

Or, if qimage module fails to configure, try:

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-gpl --qimage-libdir=/usr/lib/ --qimage-includedir=/usr/include/qt4

Read configuration output and make sure all shared libraries are found.

Compile and install MLT

The last step. Compiling will take a long time.

make clean
make -j3
sudo make install

If you are not on Ubuntu, then use su -c 'make install' instead of sudo make install.

Get a specific MLT version

This is only necessary when you experience problems with the most recent MLT version. To list the available tags and select one (e.g. v0.4.6) do:
git tag -l
git checkout tag

To switch back to the most up-to-date version use master as tag. After checking out the tag you need to do a git pull again.