Please consider using `static-ffmpeg` to eliminate `ffmpeg` explicit dependency

[zackees]

https://github.com/zackees/static-ffmpeg
pip install static-ffmpeg

import static_ffmpeg
static_ffmpeg.add_paths(weak=True)  # only installs if ffmpeg is not currently in path

This will eliminate an installation step and make the system work out of the box. static-ffmpeg works for Mac/Windows/Ubuntu

[slhck]

Thanks for the suggestion.

While I understand the purpose of your package, and I agree that “working out of the box” would be a nice feature, I am not comfortable with adding this kind of third-party dependency.

Some reasons and constructive feedback:

• It performs unverified binary installs. I wouldn't trust a random GitHub repo for binary downloads without checksum validation … perhaps you want to add such a feature in the future.
• It writes to a somewhat arbitrary location that will be hard to find later on; I'd rather users know where they installed ffmpeg and can update that using the recommended methods and “official” static builds.
• The binaries you provide are already outdated.
• Your binary distribution violates the FFmpeg license, as you don't give proper credit (including FFmpeg's original license as well as the source code used for compilation).

[slhck]

I updated the README to point users to places and methods to install ffmpeg.