Recipe for building FFmpeg
version: '$Id: FFmpeg-recipe.txt 45642 2011-04-03 11:28:41Z andre $'
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I build FFmpeg with the goal to be able to create OGG audio from mp3 files, OGV video files from mpeg and H264 video from mpeg. But of course it can do a lot more. I did this on Mac OS X, but I think it will apply to other Unix flavors as well. A lot of systems, like Ubuntu already have FFmpeg installed. I found a lot of information about doing this in:

http://www.ffmpeg.org/
http://juliensimon.blogspot.com/2008/12/howto-compiling-ffmpeg-x264-mp3-xvid.html
http://howto-pages.org/ffmpeg/

You can get information about the abilities of your version by typing 'ffmpeg -version' or 'ffmpeg -formats' to get a complete list. The result of my current build for example:
  
  ffmpeg -version
  FFmpeg version SVN-r19314, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
    configuration: --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-zlib --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad
    libavutil     50. 3. 0 / 50. 3. 0
    libavcodec    52.32. 0 / 52.32. 0
    libavformat   52.36. 0 / 52.36. 0
    libavdevice   52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
    libavfilter    0. 5. 0 /  0. 5. 0
    libswscale     0. 7. 1 /  0. 7. 1
    libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
    built on Jul  1 2009 15:02:58, gcc: 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493)
 
Download the source of FFmpeg or get it from svn:

    svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg

Notice that this command reports on the second line the exact configuration with which FFmpeg was build. This is what we aim at. 
 
   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-zlib --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad

When your run that while missing one of the libraries you specifiy you get an error, something like:

  FAAD test failed.
  If you think configure made a mistake, make sure etc.

When you have them all you can do the following commands tho install 

   make
   sudo make install
   
I've downloaded and installed several sources. Notice that several of them are non-free. Query FFmpeg to check the status of yours:

  ffmpeg -L
  FFmpeg version SVN-r19314, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
    configuration: --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-zlib --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad
    libavutil     50. 3. 0 / 50. 3. 0
    libavcodec    52.32. 0 / 52.32. 0
    libavformat   52.36. 0 / 52.36. 0
    libavdevice   52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
    libavfilter    0. 5. 0 /  0. 5. 0
    libswscale     0. 7. 1 /  0. 7. 1
    libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
    built on Jul  1 2009 15:02:58, gcc: 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493)
  This version of FFmpeg has nonfree parts compiled in.
  Therefore it is not legally redistributable.


Download libfaac en libfaad, you can find these via http://www.audiocoding.com/downloads.html

Download libx24, the daily tarball at http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html

Download libogg, libtheora, libvorbis from
http://www.xiph.org/downloads/

Download Lame http://lame.sourceforge.net/download.php

I installed libx24 with:
  
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-shared --disable-asm
  make 
  sudo make install

And I installed each of the others with the following commands. Move to each of their directories and type:

  ./configure
  make
  sudo make install


Configure FFmpeg to build it.

  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-zlib --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --disable-yasm

And then:
  
  make
  sudo make install

NOTE: WebM/VP8 support
You can add WebM/VP8 support by including libvpx in one of the more recent checkouts of ffmpeg. Download a recente version of libvpx at http://code.google.com/p/webm/downloads/list, follow the steps like for one of the other libraries and include libvpx while building ffmpeg:

   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-bzlib --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-zlib --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libvpx

--André