Building FFMPEG and VLC from sources on Debian Jessie

Debian Jessie and older versions do not come with ffmpeg. Instead, it comes with libav, which is a fork from ffmpeg. HOwever, there are situations when you find yourself in the need of ffmpeg. In this article, we explain how you can build ffmpeg from sources and we will also build our own vlc which will be capable of employing our own build version of ffmpeg behind the scenes.

Start by upgrading your packages and installing build-essential:

#!/bin/bash

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential 

Download ffmpeg and vlc:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p $HOME/sources/software
cd $HOME/sources/software
wget http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-2.7.1.tar.gz
wget http://get.videolan.org/vlc/2.2.0/vlc-2.2.0.tar.xz

Install build dependencies ffmpeg needs:

#!/bin/bash

sudo apt-get install libmp3lame-dev libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev \
    libspeex-dev yasm pkg-config libfaac-dev libopenjpeg-dev \
    libx264-dev libass-dev

Compile and install ffmpeg:

#!/bin/bash

tar xpf ffmpeg-2.7.1.tar.gz
cd ffmpeg-2.7.1/
./configure --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale \
    --enable-avfilter --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvorbis \
    --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libspeex \
    --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-libopenjpeg \
    --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --enable-libass
make
sudo make install
sudo /sbin/ldconfig

Install build dependencies vlc needs:

#!/bin/bash

sudo apt-get build-dep vlc

Compile and install vlc:

#!/bin/bash

./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-ffmpeg-tree=/usr/local \
  --enable-x11 --enable-xvideo --disable-gtk \
  --enable-sdl --enable-ffmpeg --with-ffmpeg-mp3lame \
  --enable-mad --enable-libdvbpsi --enable-a52 --enable-dts \
  --enable-libmpeg2 --enable-dvdnav --enable-faad \
  --enable-vorbis --enable-ogg --enable-theora --enable-faac\
  --enable-mkv --enable-freetype --enable-fribidi \
  --enable-speex --enable-flac --enable-livedotcom \
  --with-livedotcom-tree=/usr/lib/live --enable-caca \
  --enable-skins --enable-skins2 --enable-alsa --disable-kde\
  --disable-qt --enable-wxwindows --enable-ncurses \
  --enable-release
make
sudo make install

Remember that now you have two versions of vlc installed in your system. The version of vlc we installed employs ffmpeg under the hood from /usr/local, whilst the version which comes with Debian employs libav.

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