ffmpeg not finding vcodec libx264

Question

I've installed the latest ffmpeg but it seems unable to locate the video codecs. Do I need to completeley remove ffmpeg and re run the ./configure differently in order for ffmpeg to find the video codecs?

Here's my current configuration:

FFmpeg version git-f61cbc2, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers built on Jan 18 2011 10:59:49 with gcc 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465) configuration: --enable-libmp3lame --enable-shared --disable-mmx --arch=x86_64 libavutil 50.36. 0 / 50.36. 0 libavcore 0.16. 1 / 0.16. 1 libavcodec 52.108. 0 / 52.108. 0 libavformat 52.94. 0 / 52.94. 0 libavdevice 52. 2. 3 / 52. 2. 3 libavfilter 1.74. 0 / 1.74. 0 libswscale 0.12. 0 / 0.12. 0

Or, can I just re-run the make command to include the library?

Here's my snippet for transcoding:

ffmpeg -i ~/Desktop/watercarts.mov -vcodec libx264 -b 250k -bt 50k -acodec libfaac -ab 56k -ac 2 -s 480x320 ~/Desktop/watercartsipod.mp4

And the error:

Unknown encoder 'libx264'

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You need to configure with ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 and you need recent x264.

Answer 2

In Ubuntu 10.10 (maverick) this codec is provided by package libavcodec-extra-53 from multiverse repository.

Answer 3

try installing using apt-get install and not by compiling the source. It will download all necessary codec libraries (at least on my gubuntu)

Answer 4

If you are using ubuntu (various version) , you can install ffmpeg with the lib x264 using this suggestion

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1117283

Personally i use option "C". Two simple command (copy and paste) , automatic install of the right version + library, nothing to compile, and all work fine :)

If you prefer to compile then there is the "A" option on the same page (it work on ubuntu 10.10 i have compiled the last version).

Answer 5

I found an link to a binary static build on this forum and it worked completely out of the box!

Long story short

$ wget https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz
$ tar xvf ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz
$ cd ffmpeg-4.1.1-amd64-static

$ ./ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 4.1.1-static https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/
...