ffmpeg is THE audio/video conversion tool. Unfortunately, the default build included in Ubuntu is usually quite outdated, as well as lacking support for many codecs.
The purpose of this article is to show you how you can build a fresh, up to date version of ffmpeg supporting (almost) all codecs. This procedure was successfully performed on Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10.
0) Prerequisites
Before we start, let's check if subversion and git are installed. We'll need both to install some of the libraries required by ffmpeg:ubuntu% svn
Type 'svn help' for usage.ubuntu% gitOK, they're both present. If not, you need to install them with the following commands:
usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]ubuntu% sudo apt-get install subversionubuntu% sudo apt-get install git git-coreNow would be a good time to decide where you're going to build all those sources. Just create a temporary directory anywhere you like (you'll need less than 150MB).
[Updated on 2008/01/02] If you have an existing installation of ffmpeg, you may run into linking issues caused by conflicting library versions. My advice is to remove all existing copies of libav* (libavcodec and so on) which may be present in /usr/lib, either by uninstalling them with APT or by deleting the .a and .so files. Please read the comments below for additional information.
1) Fetching the ffmpeg sources
First of all, let's get the latest ffmpeg source snapshot from the Subversion server:
ubuntu% svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
lots of output removed
Checked out external at revision 28172.
Checked out revision 16245.
Of course, you could just go ahead with configure, make, make install and be done with it. Unfortunately (?), it's not that simple. Go ahead, run configure:
ubuntu% cd ffmpeg
ubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
lots of output removed
Creating config.mak and config.h...
Take a closer look at the output, especially at the 'Enabled encoders' section. A number of major formats, like AAC, MP3, x.264 or XViD are missing. Can you live without these? Probably not...
Why, oh why are they missing? Take another look at the output of the configure command:libfaac enabled no
libmp3lame enabled no
libx264 enabled no
libxvid enabled no
These encoders are missing because they're handled by external libraries which are not part of the ffmpeg source package. Chasing them all is a bit of a pain in the #$$ and hopefully this article will help!2) Configuring ffmpeg... and failing
Let's go wild and enable almost everything, including shared libraries (nice if you're running multiple copies of ffmpeg) and POSIX threads (additional parallelism can't hurt):ubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaadbin --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libnut --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib
It will inevitably lead to something like this:FAAD test failed.
If you think configure made a mistake, make sure you are using the latest
version from SVN. If the latest version fails, report the problem to the
ffmpeg-user@mplayerhq.hu mailing list or IRC #ffmpeg on irc.freenode.net.
Include the log file "config.err" produced by configure as this will help
solving the problem.
It's normal, we haven't installed the external libraries required for our ffmpeg build. Let's get to it!
3) Installing libamr
This library is needed for 3GPP speech codecs. For legal reasons, it is not part of the standard Ubuntu repository. You can find it in the Medibuntu repository. Of course, you need to let APT know about this new repository. These are the commands for Ubuntu 8.04 (more information on other versions here):
ubuntu% sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
ubuntu% sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get updateubuntu% sudo apt-get install libamrnb-dev libamrwb-dev4) Installing libnutubuntu% svn co svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/nut/src/trunk/ nut
ubuntu% cd nut
ubuntu% make
ubuntu% sudo make install
5) Installing libx264
x264 is a free library for encoding H264/AVC video streams.
It can be fetched with APT using 'apt-get install libx264-dev' but let's make sure we have both the latest ffmpeg and the latest x264.
Before we build the x264 source, we need to install
- libgpac, required to support the mp4 container with the x264 codec,
- the yasm assembler, required to compile several assembly language routines present in the x264 code.
ubuntu% sudo apt-get install libgpac-devNow, let's take a look at yasm:
ubuntu% yasm --version
zsh: command not found: yasm
It's not there. Let's get it using APT:ubuntu% sudo apt-get install yasm
ubuntu% yasm --version
yasm 0.5.0.1591
ubuntu% git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git
ubuntu% cd x264
ubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-shared
Found yasm 0.5.0.1591
Minimum version is yasm-0.6.1
If you really want to compile without asm, configure with --disable-asm.
Hmmm.. Do we want to use generic C routines instead of optimized assembly? No. Let's build the latest yasm (0.7.2 at the time of this writing):
ubuntu% sudo apt-get remove yasmubuntu% wget http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/releases/yasm-0.7.2.tar.gzubuntu% tar xvfz yasm-0.7.2.tar.gz
ubuntu% cd yasm-0.7.2
ubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/localubuntu% makeubuntu% sudo make installubuntu% yasm --version
yasm 0.7.2.2153OK, now we can build x264:
ubuntu% cd x264
ubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-shared
output removed
Platform: X86
System: LINUX
asm: yes
avis input: no
mp4 output: yes
pthread: yes
debug: no
gprof: no
PIC: no
shared: yes
visualize: no
ubuntu% make
ubuntu% sudo make install
6) Installing libxvid
Before we install libxvid, we need to check that the nasm assembler is OK. It's required to build assembly code in libxvid and you do NOT want this code to be replaced with generic C code in case nasm is missing : I ran some Xvid encoding tests with and without assembly code and there's a 2.5x factor... So read on :)
You need at least nasm 2.0, so let's check the default version on Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10:
ubuntu8.04% sudo apt-get install nasmubuntu8.04% nasm -v
NASM version 0.99.06-20071101 compiled on Sep 16 2008
ubuntu8.10% sudo apt-get install nasm
ubuntu8.10% nasm -v
NASM version 2.03.01 compiled on Jun 19 2008
So, if you have 8.10, you're good to go and you can skip the rest of this section. If you have 8.04, follow me:
ubuntu% sudo apt-get remove nasm
ubuntu% wget http://www.nasm.us/pub/nasm/releasebuilds/2.05.01/nasm-2.05.01.tar.gz
ubuntu% tar xvfz nasm-2.05.01.tar.gz
ubuntu% cd nasm-2.05.01
ubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
ubuntu% makeubuntu% sudo make install
ubuntu% nasm -v
NASM version 2.05.01 compiled on Dec 23 2008
Now, let's fetch the xvid sources and build them:
ubuntu% wget http://downloads.xvid.org/downloads/xvidcore-1.2.1.tar.gzubuntu% tar xvfz xvidcore-1.2.1.tar.gzubuntu% cd xvidcore/build/genericubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/localubuntu% make
lots of output removed
---------------------------------------------------------------
Xvid has been successfully built.
* Binaries are currently located in the '=build' directory
* To install them on your system, you can run '# make install'
as root.
---------------------------------------------------------------
ubuntu% sudo make install
7) Installing everything elseAll the other libraries we need are part of the standard Ubuntu repository. Let's install them all with a single command:
ubuntu% sudo apt-get install libfaac-dev libfaad-dev libschroedinger-dev libtheora-dev libvorbis-dev libxv-dev libxvmc-dev
We also need to install the LAME MP3 encoder. The name of the library differs on Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubunto 8.10, so choose wisely :)
ubuntu8.04% sudo apt-get install liblame-devubuntu8.10% sudo apt-get install libmp3lame-dev8) Configuring ffmpeg... and succeeding!
[Updated on 2009/02/18 : the '--enable-xvmc' flag has been removed. XVMC support now seems to be integrated by default. If you're using an old build, please add the flag to the command line below]
[Updated on 2009/03/09 : the '--enable-swscale' flag has been removed. This library is now built by default. If you're using an old build, please add the flag to the command line below]
ubuntu% cd ffmpegubuntu% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaadbin --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libnut --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib
lots of output removed
License: unredistributable
Creating config.mak and config.h...
All right. Let's build it.
That's the easiest bit!
ubuntu% make
LOTS of output removed
ranlib libavutil/libavutil.a
rm doc/ffserver.pod doc/ffmpeg.pod doc/ffplay.pod
ubuntu% sudo make install
That's it. Cool, huh? Before you can start playing with your ffmpeg binary, you need to register those new dynamic libraries in /usr/local/lib (I'm using zsh. the syntax may be different if you're using another shell):ubuntu% LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATHubuntu% export LD_LIBRARY_PATHubuntu% sudo ldconfig
Now, let's check this new ffmpeg:ubuntu% which ffmpeg
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg
ubuntu% ffmpeg -formats
lots of output removed
10) Cleaning up
ubuntu% cd /usr/local/libThere's nothing really wrong here, but for the sake of clarity, you may want to remove the old libraries, i.e. the ones NOT linked as lib*.so.
ubuntu% ls -l libav*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24108334 2009-02-20 11:15 libavcodec.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2009-02-20 11:15 libavcodec.so -> libavcodec.so.52.15.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2009-02-20 11:15 libavcodec.so.52 -> libavcodec.so.52.15.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5791060 2009-02-04 11:34 libavcodec.so.52.11.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5791192 2009-02-05 15:29 libavcodec.so.52.12.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5791228 2009-02-10 17:46 libavcodec.so.52.14.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5774920 2009-02-20 11:15 libavcodec.so.52.15.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 467478 2009-02-20 11:15 libavdevice.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2009-02-20 11:15 libavdevice.so -> libavdevice.so.52.1.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2009-02-20 11:15 libavdevice.so.52 -> libavdevice.so.52.1.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39492 2009-02-20 11:15 libavdevice.so.52.1.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 63220 2009-02-20 11:15 libavfilter.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2009-02-20 11:15 libavfilter.so -> libavfilter.so.0.3.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2009-02-20 11:15 libavfilter.so.0 -> libavfilter.so.0.3.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17876 2009-02-20 11:15 libavfilter.so.0.3.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6259158 2009-02-20 11:15 libavformat.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2009-02-20 11:15 libavformat.so -> libavformat.so.52.29.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2009-02-20 11:15 libavformat.so.52 -> libavformat.so.52.29.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 766736 2009-02-05 15:29 libavformat.so.52.25.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 770972 2009-02-10 17:46 libavformat.so.52.26.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 771072 2009-02-12 16:57 libavformat.so.52.27.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 775232 2009-02-13 11:22 libavformat.so.52.28.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 767108 2009-02-20 11:15 libavformat.so.52.29.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 225672 2009-02-20 11:15 libavutil.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2009-02-20 11:15 libavutil.so -> libavutil.so.49.14.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2009-02-20 11:15 libavutil.so.49 -> libavutil.so.49.14.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 55508 2009-02-20 11:15 libavutil.so.49.14.0
That's it for today :)
40 commentaires:
Worked all fine, thanks for that how to.
Just one little thing
ffmpeg -formats
brings up an error
ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libavcodec.so.52: undefined symbol: av_lfg_init
got any idea if I need to fix this, and how?
av_lfg_init() is normally part of libavutil. Maybe you have an older version of libavutil in /usr/lib which doesn't have this symbol?
Just remove the .a & .so files and run 'ldconfig -v' as root. BTW, you may have to do the same for libavcodec, libavdevice, libavfilter and libavformat as well.
That should fix it, but let me know :)
removed the libavutil.a & .so as well as the libavcodec.a &.so everything else wasn't present.
after that i ran ldconfig -v as sudo, but the Error remains.
followed the tutorial again after deleting them all, now it works.
Maybe you should add a comment to delete these files before starting
Thanks for your help and this great tutorial
Great! I guess some linking is needed as well.I will update the post accordingly.
And thanks for the kind words :)
Hi, great blog! I've been following a lot of your posts. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I'm learning a lot.
I have run into a bit of a snag though, I've managed to successfully configure ffmpeg but when I run make it hangs-up with this error.
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/local/lib/libnut.a(muxer.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
/usr/local/lib/libnut.a: could not read symbols: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [libavformat/libavformat.so.52] Error 1
I did try removing libnut.a then recompiling it (per this post), but again after configuring and making ffmpeg I get the same error. Any ideas? (8.10 Ubuntu Server AMD64).
Thanks!
Excellent tutorial, helped me a lot!
Quick tip for those of us running on a x86_x64 (AMD64) architecture. When building ffmpeg, you may encounter the following error coming from libnut.a(muxer.o):
relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared
object;
To fix that, you'll have to rebuild libnut with the -fPIC switch. Simply add this switch in libnut's config.mak along the other parameters for the CFLAGS variable, or adding the following line to the file:
CFLAGS += -fPIC
Then you can rebuild libnut:
ubuntu% cd nut
ubuntu% sudo make uninstall
ubuntu% sudo make distclean
ubuntu% make
ubuntu% sudo make install
And then rebuilding ffmpeg.
That did it! Thank you chupstix it worked like a charm.
In step 7
"ubuntu% sudo apt-get install libfaac-dev libfaad-dev libavcodec-dev libmp3lame-dev libschroedinger-dev libtheora-dev libvorbis-dev libxv-dev libxvmc-dev"
libavcodec-dev is not required, and may cause problems because this is part of ffmpeg.
@ マーク:
you're right. Damn cut & paste :) I fixed it in the entry. Thanks!
I have run into two glitches:
1) In step 7, we install "everything else" with this command:
ubuntu% sudo apt-get install libfaac-dev libfaad-dev libmp3lame-dev libschroedinger-dev libtheora-dev libvorbis-dev libxv-dev libxvmc-dev
but the file in bold is not found in Ubuntu 8.04, but is in 8.10. How do I install it?
2) When I run configure in step 8, it always fails with "FAAD test failed." When I look in the config.err file, i see that it cannot find a certain directory:
BEGIN /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.c
1 int x;
END /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.c
gcc -D_ISOC99_SOURCE -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200112 -std=c99 -c -o /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.o /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--
21846-.c
check_header faad.h
check_cpp
BEGIN /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.c
1 #include faad.h
2 int x;
END /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.c
gcc -D_ISOC99_SOURCE -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200112 -std=c99 -E -o /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.o /tmp/ffmpeg-conf--
21846-.c
/tmp/ffmpeg-conf--21846-.c:1:18: error: faad.h: No such file or directory
FAAD test failed.
Any idea how i can fix this?
@Randy:
Regarding your first problem, here's the fix. The name of the library in Ubuntu 8.04 is liblame-dev. It was renamed to libmp3lame-dev in Ubuntu 8.10. I'll update the post.
Regarding your second problem, I'm not sure. Let me check :)
Cheers!
@Randy: are you sure you installed libfaad-dev (and not libfaad)? You can check with 'dpkg -l|grep faad-dev'. If it's installed, you should see faad.h in /usr/include.
Thanks for the great how-to.
Like Sk1ink I have the same problem:
ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libavcodec.so.52: undefined symbol: av_lfg_init
I followed your instructions and those of Sk1nk by following the how-to.
After starting mediatomb I can transcode a mkv file once. After stopping the transcoding, the same error keeps coming back.
Any ideas on how to get rid of the error ?
Thanks
@JS: yes, I installed libfaad-dev as you suggested and now all is well. Thank you.
If you are getting a FAAD error, try installing the FAAD dev files.
Try:
sudo apt-get install libfaad-dev
Hope that helps!
Hi,
I have Ubuntu 8.10.
I keep repeating the steps, but I keep getting this error message after "make":
make: *** [libavformat/libavformat.so.52] Error 1
I can't make ffmpeg to work, and when I do the ./configure line, it seems like most libraries get enabled, but I just can't get "make" to work out. I've tried many ways and days but don't see to know what's wrong.
Thanks!
Ed
Got a new one.
After it worked fine for some weeks, now mp4ize keeps saying
"Couldn't figure out aspect ratio."
even on movies which I mp4ized last time it worked.
Any idea what happend and how to fix it?
Me again, played a little with it, and found out that this error is my old friend again.
So I did the steps 1, 2 and 8) + 9) again now it works fine.
Think this happens if synaptic updates ffmpeg.
@decibo
I had the same problem, I fixed it using chupstix tip and rebuilding nut. Hope this helps for you
Hey anonymous,
I rebuilt nut using his solution, and it works. thanks a lot man!
Ed
I owe you a beer or better. Your great howto saved me a lot of time and my a** at least. Thank you so much!
@sascha: LOL. Glad I could help :)
For me the problem with the aspect ratio returns after rebooting.
since i couldn't find a solution i keep repeating the steps.
Any ideas?
Thanks man..
Your tutorial is very good..
Congratulations..
Okay, revisiting this one again. It all works when it works, but when it doesn't, which is after every reboot and sometimes just randomly, i have to do the LD_LIBRARY_PATH thingy. I'd rather not have to do that every so often... Any idea what the problem could be?
@Magnus: the easiest and most foolproof solution is to set LD_CONFIG_PATH in you.cshrc file (or equivalent, depending on what shell you use) :)
I'm thankful for the help I received using this guide :) Great work !!
Just wanted to add that swscale now is enbled by default so you should exclude the --enable-swscale when configuring.
I was haunted by old libav* so be sure to clean up before starting.
Cheers !!
Hi Alex! Thanks, you beat me to it :) I updated the entry.
I would just like to include that if you are following these steps to eventually build vlc, you will want to use a snapshot of x264 that is not so current. I was successful when I used:
wget http://downloads.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/x264-snapshot-20090101-2245.tar.bz2
(suggestion given by maurixio in the comments of the compiling vlc post)
Maybe this blog post should be updated to use that rather than whats in git.
Not only a nice howto but a good tutorial. Thanks. For Jaunty Jackalope, I got the following error:
ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: ffmpeg: undefined symbol: avformat_alloc_context
This was fixed by removing --enabled-shared from the configure.
Hey, how ya doin'?
I was following your guide, then I found out that it is possible to compile it as a .deb package, via the 'sudo checkinstall -D make install' command instead of the classical 'make && sudo make install'. This saves a lot of time if you need to re-install your distro for some reason.
Thanks for this guide!
was trying the ./cfg that you had and there was 4 lib's not there
--enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libgsm
this took care of the libamr
ubuntu% Wget http://debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/o/opencore-amr/opencore-amr_0.1.1.orig.tar.gz
ubuntu% tar xvfz opencore-amr_0.1.1.orig.tar.gz
ubuntu% cd opencore-amr-0.1.1.orig
ubuntu% make
ubuntu% sudo make install
I had to chang there switches to
--enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb
and i added --enable-version3
i got the other 2 just dont rember how thou.
A way to get around the use of opencore-amr (which was problematic to build on 9.04) is to revert to revision 19071 (rather than the latest).
svn checkout -r 19071 svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
Hi,
When I run make for ffmpeg I get the error:
/ffmpeg/libswscale/libswscale.so: undefined reference to `av_clip_uint16'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [ffmpeg_g] Error 1
Any ideas?
TIA!
I think I fixed it...
svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk libswscale
then copied the file common.h from ~/temp/libswscale/libavutil to ~/temp/ffmpeg/libavutil
make seems to have had succeeded.
Thank you Julien for sharing this, I wish I spotted your guide last night but fortunately ldconfig is a very good friend of mine.
Your other x264 adventures look 'really' interesting, I'll definitely be needing to look at those very soon :)
ps You're linkedin but no twittered ?
Hi
Many thanks for the great How-To. Everything works great.
Unfortunately I'm having problems with installing services that require libav. I re-installed a service called mt-daapd which can publish a specific folder to appear as a Shared Library in iTunes. This package depends on libavcodec, libavcodec52 and libavutil49. Those libs get installed in /usr/lib. As soon as they are there, ffmpeg is broken. I get this eraror message: ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libavdevice.so.52: undefined symbol: avfreepacket I really do not know what is going on as it points to the correct lib in /usr/local/lib. There must be a problem with library linking or something, I guess. I am no Ubuntu expert, but shouldn t it be possible for local libs to co-exist with system wide libs? When I uninstall libavcodec libs from /usr/lib and re-install ffmpeg, it is working again. But that automatically removes mt-daapd. I guess the same would happen if I d install any other package (like vlc...) that is dependent on those libav*-libs in /usr/lib Can you see my dilemma? This is driving me nuts as I can t find a solution for this. How can I tell mt-daapd to use the libraries in /usr/local/lib and don`t install its dependencies?
Any help or advice would be highly appreciated. Thanks
Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!
I've made a similar post on this. I needed ffmpeg with aac on ubuntu on ps3. I didn't need amr. My copy-and-pastable commands and debs are available at
http://nabstersblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/ffmpeg-with-aac-on-ubuntu.html
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