FFmpeg is written in C99, thus some features may not be compilable or usable in C++. Anyway, for most purposes, including FFmpeg headers in a C++ application should be rather straightforward. First, to include the FFmpeg headers within your C++ application you need to explicitly state that you are including C code. You can do this by encompassing your FFmpeg includes using {{{extern "C"}}}, like in: {{{ extern "C" { #include #include #include } }}} Second, you may need to append {{{-D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS}}} to your CXXFLAGS flags, if the compiler complains about ’UINT64_C’ was not declared in this scope.