HOWTO: Install and use the latest FFmpeg and x264

[FakeOutdoorsman]

Hello!
I'm using Ubuntu Karmic and i've followed the howto step by step.

Have anybody seem this error? I've compiled ffmpeg+x264 in 2 different machines, same result.

$ ffmpeg -i VTS_01_1.VOB -vcodec libx264 comercial.mp4
FFmpeg version SVN-r20376, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
built on Oct 27 2009 10:04:22 with gcc 4.4.1
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab
libavutil 50. 3. 0 / 50. 3. 0
libavcodec 52.37. 1 / 52.37. 1
libavformat 52.39. 2 / 52.39. 2
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libswscale 0. 7. 1 / 0. 7. 1

Input #0, mpeg, from 'VTS_01_1.VOB':
Duration: 00:08:23.70, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2717 kb/s
Stream #0.0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x480 [PAR 8:9 DAR 4:3], 7000 kb/s, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
Stream #0.1[0x80]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 192 kb/s
[libx264 @ 0xa3b3f20]broken ffmpeg default settings detected
[libx264 @ 0xa3b3f20]use an encoding preset (vpre)
Output #0, mp4, to 'comercial.mp4':
Stream #0.0: Video: libx264, yuv420p, 720x480 [PAR 8:9 DAR 4:3], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 90k tbn, 29.97 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 64 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Error while opening encoder for output stream #0.0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

Everything is working if I don't use -vcodec libx264.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks!
Marcos

You need to use a preset when using libx264. See the Using FFmpeg and x264 section of this guide for some examples.

[stoppage]

Hi Andrew,

Yes, I will take a look at the process, and if it isn't any harder than the other steps in this guide then I will definitely add it.




I'm not very familiar with WinFF, but I believe your WinFF presets were designed for an old FFmpeg because it is using outdated FFmpeg options. For more information read WinFF: How to install a newer presets file. An appropriate match seems to be presets-libavcodec52-v4.gz but I did not test this.

„Presets-libavcodec52-v4.gz“ did the trick! Obliged for all your help

[EQuake]

@FakeOutdoorsman hey, it works! Sorry, my fault. Thanks!

[sumero]

is there an example on how to use libavfilter to apply a watermark to a
video?

or a way to enable vhook in the latest ffmpeg?

nothing was wrong with vhook it works great, except that it only works
on older ffmpeg

sumero

[FakeOutdoorsman]

is there an example on how to use libavfilter to apply a watermark to a
video?

or a way to enable vhook in the latest ffmpeg?

nothing was wrong with vhook it works great, except that it only works
on older ffmpeg

sumero

I know very little of libavfilter. See the Libavfilter Documentation.

[mocha]

I wanted to tell about my experience with --enable-shared on recent SVN versions of ffmpeg. It appears that if you choose to build ffmpeg with shared libraries on Jaunty, you also have to remove all of the libav* and libav*-unstripped packages from the ubuntu repositories, otherwise unrecognized symbol errors will occur when making some conversions with ffmpeg.

I verified this by installing a shared library version of ffmpeg and then running "ldd -r /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg" and it says that there are unrecognized symbols and I'm able to trace the problem to the libav*** libraries which come from the ubuntu repo. It's also apparent because when you run ffmpeg and it displays the library versions in the header, there are 2 different versions shown for libavdevice, libavformat, and so on.

This is a problem because I cannot uninstall the repo libav* packages without taking about 50 other packages with it.

The only answer for now appears to be to build it statically, or in my case since I need to have the shared libs in order to build xine-vdpau and some other source packages, I just keep 2 debs around, one compiled with shared and the other as static.

It seems from the other thread that discusses the libav* packages that this situation may change in Karmic? Can anyone confirm?

[FakeOutdoorsman]

I wanted to tell about my experience with --enable-shared on recent SVN versions of ffmpeg. It appears that if you choose to build ffmpeg with shared libraries on Jaunty, you also have to remove all of the libav* and libav*-unstripped packages from the ubuntu repositories, otherwise unrecognized symbol errors will occur when making some conversions with ffmpeg.

I can confirm this with the unstripped libraries on Jaunty. I did not test the stripped ones. I first installed the unstripped libav* libraries and then added --enable-shared to the FFmpeg ./configure from the first page of this guide. After FFmpeg installation I ran sudo ldconfig. Attempting the one-pass CRF example from this guide gives an error:

ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: ffmpeg: undefined symbol: avcodec_channel_layout_num_channels

I never encountered this because I never --enable-shared on Ubuntu rarely have a system with any libav*.

... It's also apparent because when you run ffmpeg and it displays the library versions in the header, there are 2 different versions shown for libavdevice, libavformat, and so on.

I believe this is normal for FFmpeg to show two sets of libav*. My Arch Linux non-shared FFmpeg shows two sets as well with the same version numbers. (Update: Oops. When using "ffmpeg -version" it shows two sets, but not when using FFmpeg normally.)

This is a problem because I cannot uninstall the repo libav* packages without taking about 50 other packages with it.

The only answer for now appears to be to build it statically, or in my case since I need to have the shared libs in order to build xine-vdpau and some other source packages, I just keep 2 debs around, one compiled with shared and the other as static.

It seems from the other thread that discusses the libav* packages that this situation may change in Karmic? Can anyone confirm?

The extra packages (libavutil-extra-49 libswscale-extra-0 libpostproc-extra-51 libavformat-extra-52 libavcodec-extra-52 libavdevice-extra-52 libavfilter-extra-0) seem to cause issues in Karmic too. I'm unsure which one(s) cause errors, but I get:

ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: ffmpeg: undefined symbol: avcodec_decode_video2

And also libfaac is missing from "ffmpeg -formats", although it is listed under "Enabled encoders" after ./configure. Might be related to the extra packages or it might be a recent SVN FFmpeg issue.

[ashmew2]

One of The most comprehensive document on ffmpeg (comparable to the man pages)..I can finally stop using Windows XP on a virtualbox for converting stuff....Thank You

[Jumbs]

I wrote myself a little script that converted vids to ipod using ffmpeg, and it worked great in Jaunty.

I install karmic and ffmpeg and now it fails.
Give me a "Unknown encoder 'libx264'"

The only one available is libx264-67, and it doesnt do anything.

I don't recall doing anything special to get this to work in jaunty, did something change?

[cor2y]

If you want to convert video to ipod format and you need to compile ffmpeg yourself seems libfaac support has been removed from the unstripped library libavcodec-unstripped-52.
X264 encoding should work once libavcodec-unstripped-52 is installed dont forget the other unstripped libraries if you need them.
But for ipod video that uses aac for audio you will need to compile ffmpeg yourself to be able to have a libfaac or you could create the audio track seperate and mux or use another tool like avidemux.