How to Install the Latest version of FFmpeg on Ubuntu 20.04 / Debian 10 / CentOS 8?

Knowing how to install the latest version of FFmpeg is important if you know how to work with multimedia files. So in this post, we will help you with that.

FFmpeg is often confused with a codec, but the reality is that it is a multimedia framework. By framework, we mean that it contains codecs, tools, and programs that allow you to convert, record, and manipulate audio and video files. It is so incredibly good and efficient that many known applications already use it for their work as VLC, Handbrake, and so on.

What is the problem with FFmpeg? It has no graphical interface and everything has to be done from the terminal. And the process can get complicated. Anyway, the community brings us programs like MystiQ that provides a graphical interface to FFmpeg.

But the reality is that we come with something else. FFmpeg has a very active development and that’s why it is always improving and adding features focused on speed. So it is convenient to have the latest version available.

Install the latest version of FFmpeg

To avoid any kind of problems, uninstall FFmpeg if you have it installed.

sudo apt autoremove --purge ffmpeg

Then create a folder where the new version of FFmpeg will be located. I will install it in /opt/ but you can choose another one.

sudo mkdir -p /opt/ffmpeg

Now access it,

cd /opt/ffmpeg

Inside the folder, we proceed to download the latest version of FFmpeg that at the time of writing this post is 4.3.2

sudo wget -c https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz
--2020-09-24 16:00:35-- https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz
Resolving johnvansickle.com (johnvansickle.com)… 107.180.57.212
Connecting to johnvansickle.com (johnvansickle.com)|107.180.57.212|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 206 Partial Content
Length: 38599740 (37M), 19102780 (18M) remaining [application/x-xz]
Saving to: ‘ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz’
ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz 100%[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==========================================>] 36.81M 258KB/s in 8m 20s
2020-09-24 16:08:59 (37.3 KB/s) - ‘ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz’ saved [38599740/38599740]

Now decompress the package:

sudo tar xvf ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz

Then access the generated folder and install the binaries on the system:

cd ffmpeg-4.3.2-amd64-static/
sudo ln -s "${PWD}/ffmpeg" /usr/local/bin/
sudo ln -s "${PWD}/ffprobe" /usr/local/bin/

And with this FFmpeg will be ready and installed.

ffmpeg -version
ffmpeg version 4.3.2-static https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/ Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 8 (Debian 8.3.0-6)
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-static --disable-debug --disable-ffplay --disable-indev=sndio --disable-outdev=sndio --cc=gcc --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-gmp --enable-libgme --enable-gray --enable-libaom --enable-libfribidi --enable-libass --enable-libvmaf --enable-libfreetype --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librubberband --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libsrt --enable-libvorbis --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libxvid --enable-libzvbi --enable-libzimg
libavutil 56. 51.100 / 56. 51.100
libavcodec 58. 91.100 / 58. 91.100
libavformat 58. 45.100 / 58. 45.100
libavdevice 58. 10.100 / 58. 10.100
libavfilter 7. 85.100 / 7. 85.100
libswscale 5. 7.100 / 5. 7.100
libswresample 3. 7.100 / 3. 7.100
libpostproc 55. 7.100 / 55. 7.100

Conclusion

FFmpeg is a valuable tool in Linux, although it also has versions for other systems. But the truth is that in Linux is where we can know all the backgrounds of this tool. Today you have learned how to install the latest version in Ubuntu 20.04 / Debian 10 / CentOS.

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