In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FFmpeg on Debian 9. For those of you who didn’t know, FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution for streaming audio and video as well as recording and conversion. There’s also a great PHP package called ffmpeg-php that allows for easy use of FFmpeg from inside PHP scripts. In this tutorial, I will show you the easy way to install ffmpeg and ffmpeg-php (php extension).
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of FFmpeg on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 9 (Stretch).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install FFmpeg on Debian 9 Stretch
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:
apt-get update apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing FFmpeg on Debian 9.
Now we run the following command below to install FFmpeg:
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
To validate that the package is installed properly use the ffmpeg -version a command which will print the FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -version
To print all available FFmpeg’s encoders and decoders type:
ffmpeg -encoders ffmpeg -decoders
Congratulations! You have successfully installed FFmpeg. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing FFmpeg in Debian 9 Stretch systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official FFmpeg website.
