PHP Funda: Installing FFMPEG on Linux

FFMPEG is an open source application that allows you to convert video and audio files easily between a variety of different formats. It supports most industry-standard codec and can convert from one file format to another quickly and easily. This article will guide you to installing FFMPEG and other codec on Linux.

FFMPEG Installation Requirements:

FFMPEG

LAME Mp3 Audio Codec (Requred for mpg, flv, avi, wmv etc files)

AMR Audio Codec (Required for 3gp video files)

XVID Audio Codec

FFMPEG-PHP

Note on installing FFMPEG:

All the Audio Codec getting used in FFMPEG are not part of FFMPEG Source base

FFMPEG Download URL:

On the download page of FFMPEG they have geven the download link from SVN and checkout-snapshot but i would suggest to use SVN source code base.

FFMPEG Download Page FFMPEG

The url for the SVN source code for FFMPEG is: svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk

To download from SVN you will have to install subversion located at subversion.tigris.org, or you can use “TortoiseSVN” located at tortoisesvn.tigris.org.

LAME Mp3 Codec download URL: Lame Mp3 Codec

AMR Audio Download URL: AMR Audio Codec

To install the AMR codec you will require both AMR-WB and AMR-NB files.

XVID Audio Download URL: XVID Audio Codec

FFMPEG-PHP Download URL: FFMPEG-PHP

Installation Steps:

It is a good practice to install all the external audio codec libraries first and then install the FFMPEG.

Installing LAME MP3 Encoder

Untar the lame file by using tar zxvf lametarfile

Assign 777 permission rights to the lame folder by typing chmod 777 lamefolder -R

Traverse to the root of lame folder and type

./configure

make

make install

Installing AMR Codec

For installing the AMR codec there are two separate files that needs to be installed are AMR-WB and AMR-NB.

Untar the AMR file by using tar zxvf tarfile

Assign 777 permission rights to the amr folder by typing chmod 777 amrfolder -R

Traverse to the root of amr folder and type

./configure

make

make install

Note on Installing AMR:

You might get errors installing AMR codec on Autoconf utility of linux. To resolve this problem will have to install the latest version of Autoconf utility from Download AutoConf

Installing Xvid Codec

Untar the xvid file bu using tar zxvf tarfilename

Assign 777 permission rights to the lame folder by typing chmod 777 xvidfolder -R

Traverse to the root of xvid folder

Goto Build/generic folder and type

./configure

make

make install

Installing GCC

This is required only if the SVN for FFMPEG is not compatible with the existing version of GCC(3x) requires a new version for the same

After the installation of GCC need to convert all the files of SVN to Unix compatible by using “dos2unix ffmpegfolder/* -R”.

Installing FFMPEG

Download the ffmpeg from SVN

Assign 777 permission rights to the ffmpeg folder by typing chmod 777 ffmepgfolder -R

Traverse to the root of ffmpeg folder and type

./configure –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libogg –enable-libvorbis –enable-libamr-nb –enable-libamr-wb –enable-libxvid –enable-gpl –enable-shared

make

make install

Installing FFMPEG-PHP

Download the ffmpeg-php from Sourceforge

Unpack the archive by using following command “tar -xjf ffmpeg-php.X.XX.tar.gz”

Iterate inside the ffmpeg-php directory

Run phpize (included with your php install) to build configuration files

./configure

make

make install

NOTE FOR FFMPEG-PHP:

If you are planning to install FFMPEG-PHP then will have to add –enable-shared parameter while configuring FFMPEG

You might get installation error while making the file related to html or texti files in ffmpeg\doc folder. The solution for this that worked for me is to just create a empty file by using touch command in the respective folders.

Note:

The following configure parameter will work with FFMPEG 0.49. But now the latest version does not have –enable-libogg parameter so if you are planning to installing the latest version then the configure parameter would be /configure –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libvorbis –enable-libamr-nb –enable-libamr-wb –enable-libxvid –enable-gpl –enable-shared.

Note on Reinstalling FFMPEG:

If you are planning to reinstall the FFMPEG software the will have to perform following steps: