How to install ffmpeg with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

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.

1. Add the deb-multimedia.org to apt sources

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


2. Update apt and install deb-multimedia keyring

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


3. Remove the Debian ffmpeg package if you have already installed it

apt-get remove ffmpeg


4. Install ffmpeg and x264

apt-get install ffmpeg x264


5. 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