Install ffmpeg on Mac Snow Leopard
Ffmpeg is the de-facto open source standard for encoding audio and video. Especially with the arrival of html5 which uses codecs like Ogg, Theora, Vorbis, h264, webm among others, and the increasing popularity of devices from Apple, such as iPod, iPad and the iPhone, all of which require a different standard from flv, the version so widely in use by Adobe Flash.
Another positive aspect is that ffmpeg has a much revived developer group, posed to enhance the application on a much faster pace than it has been in recent years.
Installation on Linux systems is really straight forward, especially on common distro’s like Ubuntu and Fedora. On a Mac, we will have to build it from source (if you’re not a fan of ports like me), including encoder/decoders we plan to use. Here is the breakdown to install ffmpeg on Mac OSX running Snow Leopard.
Steps to install ffmpeg on Mac OSX
Install Git
If you don’t have Git installed, download the Git installer here, install the package and run the script in the source of the mounted image. CVS is included in XCode and that is located on the snow leopard installation disc.
Install LAME (latest version from cvs)
cd ~ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@lame.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/lame login (at the password prompt, press Enter) cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@lame.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/lame co -P lame cd lame ./configure make sudo make install
Install FAAC and FAAD
cd ~ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/files/faac-src/faac-1.28/ faac-1.28.tar.gz/download tar xzvf faac-1.28.tar.gz cd faac-1.28 ./configure --with-libmp4v2 sudo make install cd ~ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/files/faad2-src/faad2-2.7/ faad2-2.7.tar.gz/download tar xzvf faad2-2.7.tar.gz cd faad2-2.7 ./configure make sudo make install
Install Yasm (for faster encoding)
cd ~ wget http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/releases/yasm-1.1.0.tar.gz tar xzvf yasm-1.1.0.tar.gz cd yasm-1.1.0 ./configure make sudo make install
Install Ogg, Vorbis and Theora
cd ~ wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.1.4.tar.gz tar xzvf libogg-1.1.4.tar.gz cd libogg-1.1.4 ./configure make sudo make install
cd ~ wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.2.3.tar.gz tar xzvf libvorbis-1.2.3.tar.gz cd libvorbis-1.2.3 ./configure make sudo make install
cd ~ wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.1.tar.bz2 tar xzvf libtheora-1.1.1.tar.bz2 cd libtheora-1.1.1 ./configure make sudo make install
Install ffmpeg
cd ~ svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg cd ffmpeg ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad2 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab --enable-libvpx-vp8
Note
As this article matures so will new versions of the above extensions become available. Especially webm will undoubtedly see a rapid development during the coming months and you should ensure that you use the latest versions of each.
I am following your tutorial, and I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you, first what is Git, and when I follow your instructions I get an error saying cvs command not found.
thanks
RE: A.J. – Git is a version control system, like CVS or Subversion. Just follow the instructions on how to install the client.
The CVS error you’re getting is because you’re missing the cvs client. Probably the easiest way to install it is by installing XCode, which is included in the OS installation disc.
Hello, thanks for the tutorial. I installed x264, but when I configure ffmpeg:
./configure –enable-gpl –enable-libx264
it says libx264 not found. Have you seen this problem?
okay, got past that hump with –enable-shared when configuring the x264. Now x264 is in the lib, and I reconfiged ffmpeg, but I still cannot encode h.264s. I get the Invalid Codec Type -1 error.
I almost got it all to work until the final task on ffmpeg. Then it threw an error.
“Unknown option “–enable-libfaad2″.”
Ya same issue here.
You can safely remove –enable-libfaad2
Also, you can skip downloading and compiling faad as well.
This is handled internally in ffmpeg now and makes the faad library obsolete. There were licensing issues with faad code you download and hence it was better just to create new gpl’d code to handle it.
Got it working with the following ffmpeg configure line. My osx is 10.6.8
./configure –enable-gpl –enable-version3 –enable-nonfree –enable-postproc –enable-pthreads –enable-libfaac –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libtheora –enable-x11grab
Thanks for the tips!
Jose,
I tried your configure on 10.6.8 but it doesn’t work. it keeps saying
Unknown option "–enable-libfaac".It is saying it for every term though. Any ideas? Thanks!