I wanted to post a full how-to for compiling VLC Media Player and VLMC (VideoLAN Movie Creator) from GIT in Ubuntu Karmic for some time, but since I've already compiled both VLC and VLMC, the how-to couldn't have been complete (that's why I initially only posted some very basic steps) since there would be some dependencies missing (there might still be, but the how-to is now more accurate). But since the holidays are over and I had to go to work today, I tough I'd compile it on this computer and tell you exactly what dependencies you need to install and the complete compilation steps needed to run both of these applications developed by VideoLAN.

Current VLC version: 1.1.0-git
Current VLMC version: 0.0.1-git

The reason for also compiling VLC is that VLMC needs the latest VLC GIT version installed to run. That's also the reason you have to remove any VLC packages you may have installed on your computer (so that the GIT libraries are used).

Important: For all the "checkinstall" commands below: if it doesn't work for you, you can simply use "sudo make install" instead of "sudo checkinstall ...". The reason I like using "checkinstall" is that it creates a .deb file (for local use only - don't use it for distribution as it's not a normal .deb file with dependencies) so you can later remove or update the application, like any other application installed through a .deb file (sudo apt-get remove vlc x264 vlmc).


The first thing you need to do is install some dependencies and the tools needed to compile x264, VLC and VLMC:

I finally got to build VideoLAN Movie Creator(VLMC) in Ubuntu so I though I'd share some basic steps in doing it. I will not post a step by step guide because it's a lot to do and I don't remember each package name - so you will have to handle the dependencies yourself (it's pretty easy: when compiling VLC, simply use sudo apt-get build-dep vlc and then when running ./configure, look for what else is missing), but I will post a generic guide and a tip without which you will not be able to build the current VLMC version (there is a small bug in the source code).

Update: We have now published a complete step-by-step guide on compiling VLC and VLMC from Git in Ubuntu.

The VLC team has been working (or actually, they call it "support" so they might not do this entirely on themselves) on a new project for quite some time, called VideoLAN Movie Creator, a free video editing software offering features to realize semi-professional quality movies, but with the aim to stays simple and user-friendly.

VLMC (VideoLan Movie Creator) pre-release will be coming soon to Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, but until then, you can fetch the current working tree using Git: