Ffmpeg Install

Ffmpeg, in addition to being a powerful multimedia application set, is an ubiquitous backend for video and audio applications across all platforms.

Even if your application of choice doesn't use ffmpeg directly, it will likely be useful for conversion and compression.

If you are doing multimedia on Linux, ffmpeg is possibly the most important dependencies to install. It is a major multimedia engine which many other applications will use, so you do want to take the time to install it well.

Since ffmpeg is a big application with innumerable options, it's best to maintain control over whether these options are enabled or disabled. It is not included in any Slackermedia queue file because the scope of the default build script available on Slackbuilds.org is insufficient. You should instead either compile ffmpeg yourself or use Slackermedia's build:

Building ffmpeg with all of its options activated can take a lot of time and involve a lot of hunting for some pretty obscure codec libraries. Download Slackermedia's own installable ffmpeg and ffmpeg-related packages from http://slackermedia.info/slackbuilds. Unless you have a specific reason for it, do not be enticed by packages on other sites offering more recent ffmpeg builds with fewer codec options.

As usual, use installpkg to install the packages.

If you fall into that peculiar position where the SlackBuilds.org ffmpeg build is too sparse but the Slackermedia build is overloaded, then you can of course build your own.

Since there is an existing SlackBuild script for ffmpeg on http://slackbuilds.org, start with that. Download the components of the package (unless you have already mirrored the entire SlackBuild tree, in which case you should just cd into the directory containing all of the components) and open the SlackBuild script in the text editor of your choice. Edit the build script include the codec support that you require.

Alternately, just build it as provided from SlackBuilds. Most substantial codec support is still opt-in, so the command to start the SlackBuild will look something like this:

su -lc 'VPX=yes XVID=yes DIRAC=yes AND SO ON ./ffmpeg.SlackBuild'

Where the string AND SO ON is all the other optional codecs listed in the build script.

For tips on using ffmpeg as a stand-alone application, see the Slackermedia ffmpeg howto.