Quick and easy way to get ffmpeg on Raspberry Pi runing Raspbian

The Raspbian repos have avonv instead of ffmpeg. If, like me, you want ffmpeg because it has some functionality not available in avconv then you can use static builds. Go to https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-linux click the 'Linux Static Builds' link and so on. If you have a Raspberry Pi 3 get the armhf build. If you have one of the first generation Pi you need the armel build. I don't have a Pi 2, but if you do why not try both builds and leave a comment about which one works.

There's a bunch of blogs posts about getting ffmpeg on Raspbian by compiling it from source. I don't know if that'd result in a binary more optimised for the Pi than the static builds referred to above. I've found the performance of the static builds adequate enough that I haven't bothered trying to build it. I suspect that doing little more than a git checkout and build, as all the guides I found described, would result in a binary with the functionality I want. It'd take a while to find out given how long a build would take on the Pi, especially a first generation. Though you could do cross compiling on an x86 machine if you were so inclined.

First generation Pi running Raspbian 8

pi@pione:~ $ ffmpeg-3.1.4-armel-32bit-static/ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 3.1.4-static http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/  Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 5.4.1 (Debian 5.4.1-2) 20160904
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-static --disable-debug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-libwebp --enable-libspeex --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libfreetype --enable-fontconfig --enable-libxvid --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-gray --enable-libopus --enable-libass --enable-gnutls --enable-libvidstab --enable-libsoxr --enable-frei0r --enable-libfribidi --disable-indev=sndio --disable-outdev=sndio --enable-librtmp --cc=gcc-5 --disable-ffplay
  libavutil      55. 28.100 / 55. 28.100
  libavcodec     57. 48.101 / 57. 48.101
  libavformat    57. 41.100 / 57. 41.100
  libavdevice    57.  0.101 / 57.  0.101
  libavfilter     6. 47.100 /  6. 47.100
  libswscale      4.  1.100 /  4.  1.100
  libswresample   2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100
  libpostproc    54.  0.100 / 54.  0.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...

Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'
pi@pione:~ $ 

Pi 3 running Raspbian 8

pi@pithree: $ ffmpeg-3.2.2-armhf-32bit-static/ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 3.2.2-static http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/  Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 5.4.1 (Debian 5.4.1-3) 20161019
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-static --disable-debug --disable-ffplay --disable-indev=sndio --disable-outdev=sndio --cc=gcc-5 --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-gray --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg
  libavutil      55. 34.100 / 55. 34.100
  libavcodec     57. 64.101 / 57. 64.101
  libavformat    57. 56.100 / 57. 56.100
  libavdevice    57.  1.100 / 57.  1.100
  libavfilter     6. 65.100 /  6. 65.100
  libswscale      4.  2.100 /  4.  2.100
  libswresample   2.  3.100 /  2.  3.100
  libpostproc    54.  1.100 / 54.  1.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...

Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'
pi@pithree:~/RandomYouTubeTwitterBot $ 

Mike Willis : 11 Jan 2017 21:48 |  Tags: Ffmpeg Pi Raspberry Raspbian |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem