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'