How To Install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, FFmpeg is a powerful multimedia framework that can encode, decode, transcode, and stream audio and video files. It is an essential tool for multimedia professionals, content creators, and developers working with audio and video content.

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 Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• 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 user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing FFmpeg on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Method 1: Installing FFmpeg Using APT

The simplest way to install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is through the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT), the default package manager for Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions.

Now we run the following command to install FFmpeg:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

Verify the Installation To confirm that FFmpeg has been installed successfully, check its version:

ffmpeg -version

Output:

ffmpeg version 4.2.4-1ubuntu0.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 9 (Ubuntu 9.3.0-10ubuntu2)

Optionally, you can also check all the encoders installed along with FFmpeg using the following command:

ffmpeg –encoders

Again, it is optional to check all the decoders that are installed along with FFmpeg using the following command below:

ffmpeg –decoders

• Method 2: Installing FFmpeg Using Snap

Snap is a modern package management system that allows for the installation of self-contained software packages on various Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. Using Snap to install FFmpeg can provide you with a more up-to-date version compared to the APT method. If Snap is not installed, you can install it by running the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd

Install FFmpeg via Snap After ensuring that Snap is installed, you can install FFmpeg by running:

sudo snap install ffmpeg

Verify the Installation To confirm that FFmpeg has been installed successfully, check its version:

ffmpeg --version

Step 4. Using FFmpeg on Ubuntu.

The usage of FFmpeg depends on individual projects and the desired output. Refer to the official FFmpeg documentation for an in-depth description of its features and examples. If you want to learn more about FFmpeg, input:

ffmpeg -h

Example 1: Converting an .mp3 Audio File to .wav using FFmpeg:

ffmpeg –i Audio.mp3 Audio.wav

Example 2: Converting an .mp4 Video File to .mov using FFmpeg:

ffmpeg –i Video.mp4 Video.mov

Congratulations! You have successfully installed FFmpeg. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing FFmpeg on your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official FFmpeg website.