How to Install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 16.04 & 14.04

FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution for streaming audio and video as well as recording and conversion. It’s also useful to convert multimedia files between various formats. FFmpeg includes libavcodec audio/video codec library in it.

How to install FFmpeg on Ubuntu, Debian, and LinuxMint

Step 1 – Add FFmpeg PPA

FFmpeg is also available under default repositories but an older version. To install the updated version, first of all, You need to add PPA to your system.

Ubuntu 16.04:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-3

Ubuntu 14.04:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/tesseract

Step 2 – Install FFmpeg

After enabling the PPA, Lets exec below commands to install FFmpeg on your Ubuntu system.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libav-tools x264 x265

Step 3 – Check FFmpeg Version

After successfully install FFmpeg, let’s check the version installed on the system.

$ ffmpeg -version

ffmpeg version 3.3.4-2~16.04.york0 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
[...]

Step 4 – FFmpeg Basic Commands

Here is the list of few ffmepg basic command options used with ffmpeg command line tool.

ffmpeg -version:show version

ffmpeg -formats:show available formats

ffmpeg -codecs:show available codecs

ffmpeg -decoders:show available decoders

ffmpeg -encoders:show available encoders

ffmpeg -bsfs:show available bit stream filters

ffmpeg -protocols:show available protocols

ffmpeg -filters:show available filters

ffmpeg -pix_fmts:show available pixel formats

ffmpeg -layouts:show standard channel layouts

ffmpeg -sample_fmts:show available audio sample formats

Click here to read more about FFmpeg on its official site.

Step 5 – Basic Examples

Below are some examples of uses of ffmpeg command line.

Reduce .mov File Size:

$ ffmpeg -i in.mov -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -crf 20 out.mov

Convert .move To .mp4

$ ffmpeg -i in.mov -vcodec copy -acodec aac -strict experimental -ab 128k out.mp4

If you encounter any problem install FFMPEG on your server please Let us know in the comment below