Ubuntu - Video - Install ffmpeg with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding)

H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video.

The ffmpeg package provided by Debian repositories doesn’t support H.264 due to patent restrictions. Luckily deb-multimedia.org provides a ffmpeg package compiled with H.264 support and it’s very easy to install.

NOTE: This is only needed if ffmpeg does not currently support H264.

To check if ffmpeg currently does have H264 support:

ffmpeg -version

If you can see “–enable-libx264”, it does have H.264 support, so no need to continue.

Add the deb-multimedia.org to apt sources

echo "deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Update apt and install deb-multimedia keyring

apt-get update
apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring
apt-get update

Remove the Debian ffmpeg package if you have already installed it

sudo apt remove ffmpeg

Install ffmpeg and x264

sudo apt install ffmpeg x264

Check

To check if ffmpeg was correctly installed run this command

ffmpeg -version

The output should be similar to this.

If you can see “–enable-libx264”, you have H.264 support.

ffmpeg version 0.7.13, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jun 13 2012 14:14:09 with gcc 4.4.5
  configuration: --enable-libdc1394 --prefix=/usr --extra-cflags='-Wall -g ' --cc='ccache cc' --enable-shared --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libgsm --enable-libtheora --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libx264 --enable-libspeex --enable-nonfree --disable-stripping --enable-avfilter --enable-libdirac --disable-decoder=libdirac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libschroedinger --disable-encoder=libschroedinger --enable-version3 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libvpx --enable-librtmp --extra-libs=-lgcrypt --disable-altivec --disable-armv5te --disable-armv6 --disable-vis
  libavutil    50. 43. 0 / 50. 43. 0
  libavcodec   52.123. 0 / 52.123. 0
  libavformat  52.111. 0 / 52.111. 0
  libavdevice  52.  5. 0 / 52.  5. 0
  libavfilter   1. 80. 0 /  1. 80. 0
  libswscale    0. 14. 1 /  0. 14. 1
  libpostproc  51.  2. 0 / 51.  2. 0
ffmpeg 0.7.13
libavutil    50. 43. 0 / 50. 43. 0
libavcodec   52.123. 0 / 52.123. 0
libavformat  52.111. 0 / 52.111. 0
libavdevice  52.  5. 0 / 52.  5. 0
libavfilter   1. 80. 0 /  1. 80. 0
libswscale    0. 14. 1 /  0. 14. 1
libpostproc  51.  2. 0 / 51.  2. 0

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