Installing FFmpeg on OS X Mountain Lion
From time to time I need to do simple jobs with videos, such as a container change. I used to use mencoder for that back on linux and I still think that the versatility of a command line tool is unparalleled by any GUI solution. So I set out to get FFmpeg on my Mac.
There is a static build available from the FFmpeg website, but I decided to take a somewhat more complicated approach and compile it from source myself.
To do so, one first needs Xcode , available from the Mac App Store. The current versions, however, do not contain the command line tools needed. A separate package called Command Line Tools needs to be installed from either navigating to the Downloads for Apple Developers site from Xcode by Xcode > Open Developer Tool > More Developer Tools… or using the built-in package manager at Xcode > Preferences… on the Downloads tab.
Two packages need to be installed separately first: LAME for mp3 encoding (compulsory) and FAAC for AAC (optional). The tar.gz files can be unpacked by, for example:
tar -xzvf faac-1.28.tar
Then enter their respective directories and issue:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Finally, check out the latest source code of FFmpeg:
git clone git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg
Compile it with LAME and FAAC enabled (the latter only if it’s installed). The --enable-nonfree switch is required by FAAC and I got an error unless I disabled Yasm.
./configure --enable-libmp3lame --enable-shared --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --disable-yasm
make
sudo make install
That’s all, FFmpeg is ready to use:
Daenerys:Downloads sesam$ ffmpeg
ffmpeg version N-44141-g9de7622 Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
built on Sep 4 2012 16:10:11 with llvm-gcc 4.2.1 (LLVM build 2336.11.00)
configuration: --enable-libmp3lame --enable-shared --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --disable-yasm
libavutil 51. 70.100 / 51. 70.100
libavcodec 54. 55.100 / 54. 55.100
libavformat 54. 25.104 / 54. 25.104
libavdevice 54. 2.100 / 54. 2.100
libavfilter 3. 15.103 / 3. 15.103
libswscale 2. 1.101 / 2. 1.101
libswresample 0. 15.100 / 0. 15.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...
Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'