Admins eHow SysAdmin Tips & Tricks

From ffmpeg.org :

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec – the leading audio/video codec library.

Installation Guide :
download the following debian package and install it :

wget http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/d/debian-multimedia-keyring/debian-multimedia-keyring_2008.10.16_all.deb
dpkg -i debian-multimedia-keyring_2008.10.16_all.deb 

Add the following lines to your /etc/apt/source.list :

nano /etc/apt/nano sources.list

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main
deb-src http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

update your apt cache :

apt-get update

install needed utils :

apt-get install checkinstall yasm git-core subversion

install ffmpeg dependencies :

apt-get build-dep ffmpeg

Install x264 :

git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git
cd x264
./configure
make
checkinstall --pkgname=x264 --pkgversion "1:0.svn`date +%Y%m%d`" --backup=no --default

Install libtheora :

wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.1.tar.gz
tar xzvf libtheora-1.1.1.tar.gz
cd libtheora-1.1.1
./configure
make
checkinstall --pkgname=libtheora --pkgversion "1.1.1" --backup=no --default

remove old libx264-dev :

apt-get remove libx264-dev

download the latest release of ffmpeg using subversion :

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg

configure and make ffmpeg :

cd ffmpeg/
./configure --enable-version3 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libgsm --enable-postproc --enable-libxvid --enable-libfaac --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-gpl --enable-x11grab --enable-nonfree
make
checkinstall --pkgname=ffmpeg --pkgversion "4:0.5+svn`date +%Y%m%d`" --backup=no --default

and we are all set 🙂
just one more note , if you are going to convert flv files to 3gp files like me 😀 use the following command :

ffmpeg -i input.flv -s 176x144 -vcodec h263 -acodec aac output.3gp