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Install FFmpeg on a Linux Box

Install FFmpeg via CLI on Linux box

These steps walk through installing a static binary of any ffmpeg version on to your linux machine. If you want to compile from source, there are several ways to do so. Here's the official guide. Tested and works on an AWS EC2 Ubuntu instance, but should work on any Linux machine.

  • SSH into your instance and become root

    $ sudo su -

  • cd to the the /usr/local/bin directory

    $ cd /usr/local/bin

  • Inside the /usr/local/bin directory, create an /ffmpeg directory

    $ mkdir ffmpeg

  • cd into the new directory

    $ cd ffmpeg

  • Check the static build directory at:

    $ wget http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz

  • The file should now be in /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg. Untar it...

    $ tar xf ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz

  • Run it and check what the latest version is

    $ ./ffmpeg -version

The output should look something like this

ffmpeg version N-60675-g8fe1076
built on Feb 16 2014 05:45:47 with gcc 4.6 (Debian 4.6.3-1)
configuration: --prefix=/root/ffmpeg-static/64bit --extra-cflags='-I/root/ffmpeg-
static/64bit/include -static' --extra-ldflags='-L/root/ffmpeg-static/64bit/lib -static' --
extra-libs='-lxml2 -lexpat -lfreetype' --enable-static --disable-shared --disable-ffserver --
disable-doc --enable-bzlib --enable-zlib --enable-postproc --enable-runtime-cpudetect --
enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libmp3lame --
enable-gray --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libspeex --
enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-version3 --enable-libvpx
libavutil 52. 64.100 / 52. 64.100
libavcodec 55. 52.102 / 55. 52.102
libavformat 55. 32.101 / 55. 32.101
libavdevice 55. 9.101 / 55. 9.101
libavfilter 4. 1.102 / 4. 1.102
libswscale 2. 5.101 / 2. 5.101
libswresample 0. 17.104 / 0. 17.104
libpostproc 52. 3.100 / 52. 3.100
  • Move the contents of your static untarred folder into the parent /ffmpeg dir
  $ mv * ../
  • If you want to be able to execute $ ffmpeg from any directory, you'll need to create a symlink inside /usr/bin:
  $ ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg
  $ ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/ffprobe /usr/bin/ffprobe #for ffprobe

done. You are now able to run the $ ffmpeg command from anywhere.

credit: this AWS forum thread

@lexmart
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lexmart commented Jan 16, 2017

Thank you, you saved me a lot of hassle.

@mtvbrianking
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I had to sign in to leave a comment for you... you've put an end to the 6hrs of Googling Bravo

@Nirjonadda
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Please can you let me know that How To Install FFmpeg and FFmpeg-PHP Extension on CentOS 7 with cPanel?

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ghost commented Apr 5, 2017

Symlinking is messy, can interfere with ffmpeg packages from a repository, and is unnecessary. /usr/local/bin should already be listed in the PATH (see echo $PATH). If you place the ff* binaries directly in /usr/local/bin without making a directory you will not need to symlink.

@IftekharDani
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IftekharDani commented Aug 17, 2017

Thank you. it worked for me.

@elnurxf
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elnurxf commented Nov 20, 2017

Thanks, mate!

@spookyuser
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spookyuser commented Dec 26, 2017

Here's a shell script that should automate this https://gist.github.com/spookyUnknownUser/dd8c75319ec581c1028310cedaea786c

@gosman
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gosman commented Jan 15, 2018

Saved me a ton of time, thank you.

@juniorknot
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Thank you. it worked for me.

@0x2f0713
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Thank you so much, it worked.!

@apolo56
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apolo56 commented Mar 18, 2018

all worked !!!
thanks a lot .
i have one question !!!
can you compile ffmpeg with Nvenc and cuda ?
most users and me now use gpu transcoding with ffmpeg , this yours working with gpu but not with mpeg4_cuvid

thanks agen for great work

@gmDreamer
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good

@NABIAHAMAD
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Thanks, its working good

@ebelliveau
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Vansickle took his builds down and has a Patreon page sitting where the packages used to be. This won't work any more as of May 16, 2018.

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ghost commented May 17, 2018

2018-05-17 03:42:35 ERROR 404: Not Found.

@SankaitLaroiya
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Thanks!

@gtssunil
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Thanks, its working perfect.

@Maverton
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Maverton commented Aug 4, 2018

Newbie here I followed the instruction
Not sure why it won't untar when using instruction
tar xf ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 25878148 (25M) [application/x-xz]
Saving to: “ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz.1”

100%[======================================>] 25,878,148 3.11M/s in 7.1s

2018-08-04 14:12:26 (3.47 MB/s) - “ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz.1” saved [25878148/25878148]

Attempting to unzip/untar using instruction nothing happens.

@thisGy
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thisGy commented Dec 22, 2018

Thanks so much!

@SehgalDivij
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SehgalDivij commented Jan 8, 2019

simply awesome. the content of this page must be present on johnvansickle's page which has links to the releases.

@gbrivate
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Thanks a lot, worked, congrats.

@YaEvan
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YaEvan commented Dec 28, 2020

Thanks.

@zmusaddique
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Dude! Thanks a ton for having this amazing tutorial.
It has worked for me and even on this date, this tutorial was hard to find. Once again, Thanks!

@zmusaddique
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simply awesome. the content of this page must be present on johnvansickle's page which has links to the releases.

Yes, that would be super helpful.

@khaivcqk
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khaivcqk commented Feb 29, 2024

I got an error -bash: ./ffmpeg: cannot execute binary file when install in Centos . What wrong? help me pls

@elnurxf
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elnurxf commented Feb 29, 2024

I would suggest use https://github.com/ivoglent/ffmpeg-composer-bin and check for CHMOD 0777

@khaivcqk
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@elnurxf thank you. I resolved my issue. I download amd architecture version instead of arm for centos OS

@Maverton
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Maverton commented Feb 29, 2024 via email

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