How To Install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FFmpeg on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, FFmpeg is a collection of tools that process audio and video files. It provides its users with various features including the encoding of videos and audios to different formats. Furthermore, users can resize their videos and capture streaming audio or videos. FFmpeg supports cross-platform compatibility with Windows, Linux, Mac OS

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 the FFmpeg on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, 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 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

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 22.04.

By default, the FFmpeg is available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to download the latest version packages of FFmpeg to your Ubuntu system:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

Check the installed version with the following command below:

ffmpeg -version

Step 3. Using FFmpeg Command-Line.

Below is the list of basic command-line options used with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -version:            show version
ffmpeg -formats:            show available formats
ffmpeg -codecs:             show available codecs
ffmpeg -decoders:           show available decoders
ffmpeg -encoders:           show available encoders
ffmpeg -bsfs:               show available bit stream filters
ffmpeg -protocols:          show available protocols
ffmpeg -filters:            show available filters
ffmpeg -pix_fmts:           show available pixel formats
ffmpeg -layouts:            show standard channel layouts
ffmpeg -sample_fmts:        show available audio sample formats

• Examples of FFmpeg command-line applications

To reduce .mov file size FFmpeg command line:

ffmpeg -i in.mov -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -crf 10 out.mov

Run the following command to Convert .mov to .mp4:

ffmpeg -i in.mov -vcodec copy -acodec aac -strict experimental -ab 256k out.mp4

Congratulations! You have successfully installed FFmpeg. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the FFmpeg multi-media library on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official FFmpeg website.