FFmpeg is a free & open source software to convert video files from one to another format. For Dropshare, we will use it to automatically convert .mov screen recordings to a .gif file, or to convert raw screen recordings from .mov to .mp4 faster and with smaller file sizes.
Dropshare 5.26.1 and newer
Automatically install FFmpeg
Dropshare can automatically install FFmpeg. To do so, open the app preferences, navigate to "General" and click "Install FFmpeg".
This will install a static FFmpeg binary from GitHub.
Manually install FFmpeg with Homebrew
FFmpeg can be manually installed with Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that helps to install software.
If you haven't yet installed Homebrew, you can do so by following their install instructions. Open Terminal.app & copy and run the install command line from the website.
Afterwards, you can install the required software FFmpeg with the following command:
brew install ffmpeg
Then you will be able to create GIF screen recordings with Dropshare, or use faster conversion from .mov to .mp4.
Legacy: Dropshare 3.12 and newer
Dropshare supports GIF Screen Recordings when a statically linked version of FFmpeg is installed on your machine.
Step 1: Install statically linked version of FFmpeg
Please download a statically-linked build of FFmpeg from the official website. Unzip the archive with an app of your choice (we recommend The Unarchiver, a free and useful unarchiving app which supports 7-ZIP), and move the FFmpeg binary to the following location in Terminal.app:
cd ~/Downloads # navigate to the Downloads folder on your Macsudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin # making sure the target directory existsmv ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg-static # moving ffmpeg to the target directory
Step 2: Remove quatantine flag from ffmpeg binary
As you might know, Mac OS X and Gatekeeper threat software downloaded from the internet with a quarantine status. In order that Dropshare is able to execute FFmpeg to convert your screen recording to a GIF file, you need to remove that quarantine status from the ffmpeg-static binary:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg-static
You can now enable the "Convert to GIF" checkbox in Dropshare for Mac.
Possible Issues and Workarounds
Dropshare tells me it cannot find ffmpeg-static although I installed it according to the user guide.
There is a known issue with custom python installations which we will address in a future update. In case you've installed python e.g. with homebrew, a possible workaround is to edit the shebang of /usr/bin/xattr to point to the system version of python, or to uninstall the custom python version with homebrew. Sorry for the inconvenience.