Who here has a Youtube-DL compile for WinXP?

[j7n]

Maybe a late update doesn't count. Demetrius2003 expects that the system will be bricked with this update. That is why I never install updates unless they fix a specific problem and don't touch other areas. Just extracting advapi32.dll from it is not enough.

[VistaLover]

1 hour ago, j7n said:

Demetrius2003 expects that the system will be bricked with this update.

... But he specifically mentions pirated Win7 versions prone to such "bricking"   : 

Quote

This phenomenon is observed everywhere on pirated versions, of which there are most in the country.
Unfortunately, it has been tested on many systems. It may work for licensed ones,

(machine translation from Russian)

[Reino]

On 6/21/2026 at 10:29 AM, AstroSkipper said:

Hello @Reino! Is there already a new address for your great releases? 🤔

Yes. https://reino.synology.me/ should work for now.

[AstroSkipper]

1 minute ago, Reino said:

Yes. https://reino.synology.me/ should work for now.

Great news! Thank you very much! Your years of work will therefore be preserved. 

[AstroSkipper]

On 6/22/2026 at 3:14 AM, autodidact said:

I don't have the space to leave all previous builds in place.  I could do something like this:

https://files.videohelp.com/u/69760/ffmpeg-win32-XP-shared-latest.7z

https://files.videohelp.com/u/69760/ffmpeg-win32-XP-static-latest.7z

Two additional archives with a static name that would always match the latest uploaded version.

I have tested your releases. ffplay is only working under Windows XP in your package ffmpeg-8.1-1643-abb1524138-win32-shared-xpmod-P4.7z but not in ffmpeg-8.2-1568-b355200263-win32-shared-xpmod-P4.7z. I compared some file sizes and noticed that your avcodec-62.dll was reduced from 65.668.622 Bytes to only 18.681.870 Bytes. I think there is a lot missing.

[autodidact]

2 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

I have tested your releases. ffplay is only working under Windows XP in your package ffmpeg-8.1-1643-abb1524138-win32-shared-xpmod-P4.7z but not in ffmpeg-8.2-1568-b355200263-win32-shared-xpmod-P4.7z. I compared some file sizes and noticed that your avcodec-62.dll was reduced from 65.668.622 Bytes to only 18.681.870 Bytes. I think there is a lot missing.

You must be trying to play a format that doesn't have a demuxer and/or decoder built-in. The current builds are scaled down to basic so the avcodec is naturally much smaller,
with support for fewer codecs. If you let me know what you are trying to play I can try to add the necessary demuxer/decoder.

Also, the current builds have no cryptography library.

[AstroSkipper]

11 hours ago, autodidact said:

You must be trying to play a format that doesn't have a demuxer and/or decoder built-in. The current builds are scaled down to basic so the avcodec is naturally much smaller,
with support for fewer codecs. If you let me know what you are trying to play I can try to add the necessary demuxer/decoder.

Also, the current builds have no cryptography library.

I tried to play a music video which I downloaded from YouTube with the H264 codec in the mp4 format. A standard format, so to speak. It was downloaded with my ytBATCH for Windows XP and processed with ffmpeg 7.1 to embed subtitle, metadata and a thumbnail. It can be played with all players, even with ffplay except your recent version 8.2. ffplay immediately closes when trying to play this video. Why did you scale down to basic?  Your previous releases have really been fine.  In my opinion, the only thing which can happen is that scaling down results in problems playing some kind of videos. BTW, I asked you in a previous post whether you also could add ffplay to your static releases. Is that possible for you? 

Edited 3 hours ago by AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

@autodidact Here is information about the used codec of the video from VLC:

[VistaLover]

7 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

Why did you scale down to basic?  Your previous releases have really been fine.  In my opinion, the only thing which can happen is that scaling down results in problems playing some kind of videos. BTW, I asked you in a previous post whether you also could add ffplay to your static releases.

Go back some pages in this thread and you'll find this was a request from several of your XP co-users (aka XP "die-hards"), either complaining about the inflated filesizes of the static executables (hence the "death" of the static "ffplay.exe") or stating they have absolutely no use for FFplay: 

On 5/2/2026 at 5:23 PM, j7n said:

Maybe someone could make a ffmpeg build with the most heavy parts cut out. Audio players can selectively include only what they need up a few megabytes. I suspect that the size is mostly the latest 3rd party video codecs.

On 5/2/2026 at 9:07 PM, nicolaasjan said:

But maybe @autodidact can give us some useful instructions for building a minimalist FFmpeg for Windows?

On 5/2/2026 at 9:28 PM, reboot12 said:

I'm just compiling minimalist ffmpeg.exe 64-bit for WinXP

On 5/2/2026 at 9:59 PM, autodidact said:

If we can define the core requirements I would be happy to make minimal builds.  I see @reboot12 even removes ffplay, which further removes an SDL2 dependency.  These things do add up in size.

On 5/2/2026 at 10:05 PM, reboot12 said:

Yea, for play on Windows I use VLC - ffmpeg only for combine audio+video downloaded by youtube-dl

On 5/3/2026 at 1:06 AM, reboot12 said:

On 5/3/2026 at 12:48 AM, K4sum1 said:

Fair, but have you never wanted to drag a video onto ffplay.exe and watch it play the video without having anything installed?

No, never. I have always double-click .mp4 and is opened in VLC to watch everything and I don't need anything else. I no need scripts for download

On 5/3/2026 at 9:35 AM, j7n said:

Not really. I would have to "install" ffplay still when I could install some other normal software like MPC-HC Using command-line is not convenient for routine tasks.

Since ffmpeg is really large

On 5/3/2026 at 12:06 PM, reboot12 said:

You need to consider what the absolutely minimal version of ffmpeg.exe for youtube-dl.exe should do?

• only support YouTube formats:

.mp4, .webm, .m4a containers

audio formats: opus, aac

video formats: avc1, av01, vp9

• combine selected audio and video streams
• extract audio and video stream into separate files

I compiled a version that can do this and it only takes >>> 2.20 MB <<< and works OK

On 5/3/2026 at 4:40 PM, reboot12 said:

I hate bloated apps that can do a million things.
...
What do I need libfdk_aac & libmp3lame for?

On 5/4/2026 at 6:48 PM, reboot12 said:

but ~100 MB is not a normal CMD application size.

On 5/4/2026 at 9:45 PM, reboot12 said:

I'm a minimalist and I'm irritated by such oversized applications, unnecessary code in scripts or source code.

@AstroSkipper, do you now get the picture why 1) static FFplay.exe was completely dropped 2) the FFmpeg+FFprobe compiles for XP are now built with only minimal support for codecs/muxers/filters etc. ? autodidact  is not to blame for that; he just provided what "the popular demand" is for ...

Later on, as a courtesy, he added an FFplay shared build ONLY, again with just basic libs, for those (few?) XP users wanting to make use of it: 

https://msfn.org/board/topic/184368-who-here-has-a-youtube-dl-compile-for-winxp/page/45/#findComment-1288102

More references of mine:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/184368-who-here-has-a-youtube-dl-compile-for-winxp/page/45/#findComment-1288026

https://msfn.org/board/topic/184368-who-here-has-a-youtube-dl-compile-for-winxp/page/45/#findComment-1288100

Kind regards.

Edited 1 hour ago by VistaLover

[AstroSkipper]

25 minutes ago, VistaLover said:

Go back some pages in this thread and you'll find this was a request from several of your XP co-users (aka XP "die-hards"), either complaining about the inflated filesizes of the static executables (hence the "death" of the static "ffplay.exe") or stating they have absolutely no use for FFplay: 

@AstroSkipper, do you now get the picture why 1) static FFplay.exe was completely dropped 2) the FFmpeg+FFprobe compiles for XP are now built with only minimal support for codecs/muxers/filters etc. ? autodidact  is not to blame for that; he just provided what "the popular demand" is for ...

Later on, as a courtesy, he added an FFplay shared build ONLY, again with just basic libs, for those (few?) XP users wanting to make use of it: 

https://msfn.org/board/topic/184368-who-here-has-a-youtube-dl-compile-for-winxp/page/45/#findComment-1288102

More references of mine:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/184368-who-here-has-a-youtube-dl-compile-for-winxp/page/45/#findComment-1288026

https://msfn.org/board/topic/184368-who-here-has-a-youtube-dl-compile-for-winxp/page/45/#findComment-1288100

Kind regards.

Thanks! But I am not such a Windows XP user. And I didn't blame anyone. I generally avoid slim, light or whatever releases. And I simply asked to have a look into it and maybe he can provide full releases which haven't been neutered as he did before.  Not everything people call for actually makes sense.  Especially when even standard videos can’t be played anymore. 

Edited 39 minutes ago by AstroSkipper