How to install ffmpeg on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8

If you ever need a quick way to convert between video or audio formats in Linux and want something that doesn't munch on resources but does the job well, then you might want to give ffmpeg a try. There are many GUI interfaces for the ffmpeg package but in this article we'll learn how to install it in RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 using the command line and compiling tools.

FFMpeg has many command line options when it comes to converting files and therefore it is advisable to use it from the CLI. From there you can fine-tune its options using attributes and even learn how to create BASH scripts to make automatic conversion scripts.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to compile the ffmpeg source code from scrach

Software Requirements and Conventions Used

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Software	N/A
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions	# - requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ - requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Compile ffmpeg from Git

You can retrieve the ffmpeg source code from Git and compile it yourself. First make sure you have the necessary development packages installed:

$ su -

# dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"

Be sure to also install Git so we'll have something to grab the source code with:

$ sudo dnf install git

Now you can download the ffmpeg Git source:

$ git clone https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg

After all is done you will have to navigate to the freshly-downloaded ffmpeg source code directory

$ cd ffmpeg

and prepare to compile the source code:

$ ./configure

You can bypass the optional nasm dependency with

$ ./configure --disable-x86asm

Next type

$ make

in the same CLI window you just configured ffmpeg to be compiled. After ffmpeg is done compiling (and it may take a while, depending on the power of your system) you can finally install the binary and configuration files you have just compiled by issuing

$ sudo make install

Conclusion

Compiling the source from Git is a sure way to get ffmpeg installed in RHEL 8 / CentOS 8, regardless of the version number subpoints. Using the RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 "Development Tools" packages and git the source code to ffmpeg compiles cleanly, without required dependencies.