This article will walk you through installing ffmpeg on Ubuntu Intrepid. This article assumes that you have completed the Ubuntu Intrepid Setup Guide, are working from a clean server, and you are logged in as a non-root user with sudo privileges.

Update aptitude

The first thing we need to do is make sure that our package library in aptitude is up to date. Type the following command to update:

# sudo aptitude update

Installing ffmpeg

Now that our package libraries are up to date we are ready to install ffmpeg. Luckily with Ubuntu there is already a pre-compiled binary version available in the respositories. Just type the following command to install it:

# sudo aptitude install ffmpeg

You will be prompted with a list of items that need installed. This should be approximately 17.1MB of packages on a fresh Ubuntu Intrepid installation. Press Y followed by Enter to continue.

Testing ffmpeg

Once you have successfully installed ffmpeg type the following command to test:

# ffmpeg -version

You should see an output that looks similar to the following:

FFmpeg version r11872+debian_3:0.svn20080206-12ubuntu3.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-x11grab --prefix=/usr --enable-libgsm 
  --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --disable-strip --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaadbin 
  --enable-liba52 --enable-liba52bin --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
  libavutil version: 49.6.0
  libavcodec version: 51.50.0
  libavformat version: 52.7.0
  libavdevice version: 52.0.0
  built on Mar 13 2009 17:52:45, gcc: 4.3.2
FFmpeg r11872+debian_3:0.svn20080206-12ubuntu3.1
libavutil   3212800
libavcodec  3355136
libavformat 3409664
libavdevice 3407872

Additional Codecs and Filters

Please note that this is a pre-compiled version of ffmpeg. You may require additional support for different media types, codec types, filters, etc. that may not be included with this installation. If you do require such items you will be required to compile and install those items, along with ffmpeg, yourself.

We will not provide implementation support for using ffmpeg. If you need assistance implementing ffmpeg into your website or application please see the documentation at the ffmpeg website.

More information about ffmpeg can be found out their website: http://www.ffmpeg.org/

--Kelly Koehn 13:00, 2 May 2009 (CDT)