HOWTO: Install and use the latest FFmpeg and x264

[andrew.46]

I know I'd love to, even if only to escape this blasted heat (even though I could go to Seattle for that relief too; it's a lot closer - not that I could afford any sort of vacation, though).

Hmmm... perhaps you should not come to Australia in summer then . Temps of 104 Fahrenheit are not that uncommon...

[qyot27]

Hmmm... perhaps you should not come to Australia in summer then . Temps of 104 Fahrenheit are not that uncommon...

Oh, I'd definitely be sure to make any such trip during the Southern Hemisphere's Fall or Winter. Which works out, because it's roughly the opposite of the Northern Hemisphere's Spring and Summer.

I'd be a reverse snowbird.

[spielnicht]

Please show your command and the complete terminal output. What players did you use? Does it play normally with ffplay?

I played it back with Totem on my linux box and even tried it on my Windows box and my Xoom...all with exact same results.

Command
ffmpeg -i sample.rmvb -acodec libfaac -aq 100 -vcodec libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -threads 0 sample.mp4

Output
ffmpeg -i sample.rmvb -acodec libfaac -aq 100 -vcodec libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -threads 0 sample.mp4
ffmpeg version N-31826-gd912e44, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
built on Aug 12 2011 09:48:35 with gcc 4.5.2
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab
libavutil 51. 11. 1 / 51. 11. 1
libavcodec 53. 10. 0 / 53. 10. 0
libavformat 53. 6. 0 / 53. 6. 0
libavdevice 53. 3. 0 / 53. 3. 0
libavfilter 2. 29. 1 / 2. 29. 1
libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
[NULL @ 0x33cf560] Unsupported video codec
[rm @ 0x33bd460] max_analyze_duration 5000000 reached at 5063000
Input #0, rm, from 'sample.rmvb':
Metadata:
title :
author :
copyright :
comment :
Duration: 00:43:07.63, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 510 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: cook, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 64 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Video: rv40, yuv420p, 700x460, 429 kb/s, 12.05 fps, 12 tbr, 1k tbn, 12 tbc
Stream #0.2: Data: [0][0][0][0] / 0x0000

[mysoogal]

i created this script after installing the latest ffmpeg

this script will encode to Webm,Theora OGG,MP4- with Qt-faststart, and Flash FLV.

#!/bin/bash
DIR=/var/www
find $DIR -type f |
while read i
do

ffmpeg -i "$i" "$i".webm

sleep 5

ffmpeg -i "$i" -y -vcodec libx264 -s qvga -acodec libfaac -ab 96k -ac 2 -b 200K -threads 4 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -partitions 0 -me_method epzs -subq 1 -trellis 0 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -g 300 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -maxrate 10M -bufsize 10M -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.6 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -level 30 "$i".mp4

sleep 5

qt-faststart "$i".mp4 "$i".qt.mp4

sleep 5

rm "$i".mp4

sleep 5


ffmpeg -i "$i" -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x240 "$i".flv

sleep 5

ffmpeg -i "$i" -s 720x576 -aspect 16:9 \
-vcodec libtheora -g 15 -qscale 8 \
-acodec libvorbis -ac 2 -aq 6 \
-sn "$i".ogg
done

[mocha]

Does anyone know if the latest pulls of ffmpeg have x11grab working again? There was a problem recently as far as I know.

[FakeOutdoorsman]

Looks like it's still not working as expected. I submitted this as a bug report 3 weeks ago (Ticket 373: e35c674d breaks alsa input), but it's received little attention. I might have to report it to libav as well since the commit that broke this was merged from that project, but I don't like their bug tracker at all and haven't motivated myself to get over that hump yet.

Until it gets fixed you could use the last commit that worked, and/or make a comment on the bug report.

[andrew.46]

Yet another good reason to use the latest FFmpeg with the recent addition of a Windows Media Image decoder (WMVP/WVP2). Details here. I tested with the following:

wget http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/V-codecs/WMVP/Arlington.wmv

and it all worked very nicely .

Edit: And the addition is seen also in MPlayer, see screenshot...

[vagrale13]

In some days newer version Ubuntu (Oneiric Ocelot 11.10) will be available and so today i tried to install lastest FFmpeg and x264 on it.
With commands for Natty i think works fine.
I have some warnings to config.log but i don' t know if this is problem
If someone want to see to config.log here

[menachem]

My question: How do I use your instructions to create and install libavcodec as an external codec instead of internal to ffmpeg? Is there a way to accomplish what I want without having to do that?

To explain:

This has probably been discusses in this thread already, but I couldn't find this issue.

I'm running:
Lubuntu - 11:04
Mplayer - 2:1.0~rc4.dfsg1-1ubuntu3+medibuntu1
libavcodec-extra-52 - 4:0.6.2-1ubuntu2+medibuntu1
ffmpeg - latest build following instruction in this thread

I am trying to play this file with mplayer, but it doesn't work: rtsp://rs-au.JewishAudio.org:554/ohr-tmimim/gafne-sz/5760-ki-setse-1.mp3

I get the following error message:

Initiated "audio/X-MP3-DRAFT-00" RTP subsession on port 42884
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
ADecoder init failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Requested audio codec family [mpg123] (afm=mpg123) not available.
Enable it at compilation.
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
Cannot find codec 'mp3float' in libavcodec...
ADecoder init failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
Unknown/missing audio format -> no sound
ADecoder init failed :(
Requested audio codec family [mad] (afm=libmad) not available.
Enable it at compilation.
Opening audio decoder: [acm] Win32/ACM decoders
Loading codec DLL: 'l3codeca.acm'
Loaded DLL driver l3codeca.acm at 640a000
ACM_Decoder: Unappropriate audio format
Could not load/initialize Win32/ACM audio codec (missing DLL file?).
ADecoder preinit failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Opening audio decoder: [hwmpa] MPEG audio pass-through (fake decoder)
Cannot sync MPA frame: 0
ADecoder init failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Cannot find codec for audio format 0x55.
Audio: no sound
Video: no video

ffplay is able to play the file, here is the information it gives:

ffplay version N-32309-g09c5f99, Copyright (c) 2003-2011 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Sep  4 2011 10:31:47 with gcc 4.5.2
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab --enable-libvpx --enable-decoder=mp3float
  libavutil    51. 16. 0 / 51. 16. 0
  libavcodec   53. 13. 0 / 53. 13. 0
  libavformat  53. 11. 0 / 53. 11. 0
  libavdevice  53.  3. 0 / 53.  3. 0
  libavfilter   2. 37. 0 /  2. 37. 0
  libswscale    2.  1. 0 /  2.  1. 0
  libpostproc  51.  2. 0 / 51.  2. 0

The way I see it, mplayer is failing because it is using the old, external libavcodec instead of the compiled ffmpeg which uses a newer, internal libavcodec.

However, I can't uninstall the external libavcodec without also uninstalling mplayer, since mplayer depends on libavcodec.

To try and solve this problem I want to compile ffmpeg with libavcodec as an external library, use that to replace the existing library and see if mplayer will use it.


So I figured out that I can add --enable-shared to the ./configure line to make shared libraries.

My question is, how do I run the checkinstall command to make a libavcodec package? Is this even what I need to do to solve this problem?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ron999]

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi
That stream plays OK for me with mPlayer.
I compiled mPlayer using the tutorial here:- http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1542240
This method compiles mPlayer with it's own version of FFmpeg codecs.
Maybe this is the route to follow instead of messing with your own FFmpeg.

MPlayer SVN-r34007-4.5.2 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team

Playing rtsp://rs-au.JewishAudio.org:554/ohr-tmimim/gafne-sz/5760-ki-setse-1.mp3.
Resolving rs-au.JewishAudio.org for AF_INET6...

Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: rs-au.JewishAudio.org
Resolving rs-au.JewishAudio.org for AF_INET...
Connecting to server rs-au.JewishAudio.org[75.99.96.252]: 554...

rtsp_session: session can not be established.
STREAM_LIVE555, URL: rtsp://rs-au.JewishAudio.org:554/ohr-tmimim/gafne-sz/5760-ki-setse-1.mp3
Stream not seekable!
file format detected.
Initiated "audio/X-MP3-DRAFT-00" RTP subsession on port 59204
================================================== ========================
Requested audio codec family [mpg123] (afm=mpg123) not available.
Enable it at compilation.
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 16000 Hz, 1 ch, floatle, 32.0 kbit/6.25% (ratio: 4000->64000)
Selected audio codec: [ffmp3float] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG layer-3 audio)
================================================== ========================
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: No such file or directory
AO: [alsa] 16000Hz 1ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 396.9 (06:36.9) of 0.0 (unknown) 3.4%


MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: play_audio
A: 397.0 (06:36.9) of 0.0 (unknown) 3.4%

Exiting... (Quit)