Install FFmpeg on Ubuntu, using apt-get (PPA) on Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and Derivatives. FFmpeg is a command line tool to convert multimedia files on Ubuntu.
FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. It supports the most obscure ancient formats up to the cutting edge. No matter if they were designed by some standards committee, the community or a corporation. It is also highly portable: FFmpeg compiles, runs, and passes our testing infrastructure FATE across Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, the BSDs, Solaris, etc. under a wide variety of build environments, machine architectures, and configurations.
It contains libavcodec, libavutil, libavformat, libavfilter, libavdevice, libswscale and libswresample which can be used by applications. As well as ffmpeg, ffserver, ffplay and ffprobe which can be used by end users for transcoding, streaming and playing.
FFmpeg Tools
- ffmpeg – A command line tool to convert multimedia files between formats.
- ffserver – A multimedia streaming server for live broadcasts.
- ffplay – A simple media player based on SDL and the FFmpeg libraries.
- ffprobe – A simple multimedia stream analyzer.
Install FFmpeg on Ubuntu
FFmpeg 2.8.2 is the latest version of FFmpeg Multimedia Framework. It can be installed on Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu derivatives. Run the following commands to install FFmpeg 2.8:
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:samrog131/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install FFmpeg-real
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/FFmpeg/bin/FFmpeg /usr/bin/FFmpeg
If the above command doesn’t work, try installing FFmpeg on Ubuntu, using the following commands:
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
Uninstall FFmpeg from Ubuntu
Run the following commands to uninstall and remove FFmpeg 2.8 from Ubuntu Systems:
$ sudo apt-get remove FFmpeg
$ sudo rm /opt/FFmpeg/bin/FFmpeg /usr/bin/FFmpeg
Using FFmpeg on Ubuntu
Please note that FFmpeg is a command line tool. If you like to use GUI, try installing WinFF, GUI for FFmpeg (see below). If you wish to get more help, run help or info command:
Syntax to use FFmpeg on Ubuntu
ffmpeg [[infile options][-i infile]]… {[outfile options] outfile}…
To convert a video file, simply use the following format
$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi
For example, if you want to convert mp4 file named “MTV-Gulabi” to “MTV.avi”, run the following command:
$ ffmpeg -i MTV-Gulabi.mp4 MTV.avi
See the screenshot below:
Installing WinFF – GUI for FFmpeg
WinFF is a GUI for FFmpeg. Run the following commands to install WinFF on Ubuntu:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paul-climbing/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install winff
Once installed, open WinFF from menu or Ubuntu Dash.