FFmpeg Build and Tuning Guide

Follow the instructions in the section titled “Get the Dependencies” in the FFmpeg Compilation Guide for your Linux OS. Versions exist for Ubuntu/Debian/Mint and CentOS/RHEL/Fedora. After verifying the prerequisites are correctly installed, continue to Setup.

The build instructions use the following directories for FFmpeg source files, build directories and binary output:

• ~/ffmpeg_sources – location for downloaded source files

• ~/ffmpeg_build – location of the build and output libraries

• ~/bin – location of binaries

Create the follow directories:

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mkdir -p ~/ffmpeg_sources ~/ffmpeg_build ~/bin 

Note: We modify the default build instructions to add --extra-cflags="-mcpu=native" when running configure.

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cd ~/ffmpeg_sources && \ 
git -C x264 pull 2> /dev/null || git clone --depth 1 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/x264.git && \ 
cd x264 && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib/pkgconfig" ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --bindir="$HOME/bin" --enable-static --enable-pic --extra-cflags="-mcpu=native" && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make -j $(nproc) && \
make install 

Notes: It is important to download x265 from bitbucket.org to get the latest optimizations. Also, we modify the default FFmpeg build instructions by setting the CMake environment flags CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS to use -mcpu=native. You can optionally run make with this command PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make -j $(nproc) VERBOSE=1>& make.log to build in parallel, and with VERBOSE=1 verify gcc is using -mcpu=native.

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export CFLAGS="-mcpu=native" && export CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=native" 
sudo apt-get install libnuma-dev && \ 
cd ~/ffmpeg_sources && \ 
wget -O x265.tar.bz2 https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265_git/get/master.tar.bz2 && \ 
tar xjvf x265.tar.bz2 && \ 
cd multicoreware*/build/linux && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" -DENABLE_SHARED=off ../../source && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make -j $(nproc) && \
make install 

Note: We modify the default FFmpeg build instructions to set extra_cflags and extra_cxxflags which are used by configure.

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export extra_cflags="-mcpu=native" 
export extra_cxxflags="-mcpu=native" 
cd ~/ffmpeg_sources && \ 
git -C libvpx pull 2> /dev/null || git clone --depth 1 https://chromium.googlesource.com/webm/libvpx.git && \ 
cd libvpx && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-examples --disable-unit-tests --enable-vp9-highbitdepth --as=yasm && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make -j $(nproc) && \
make install 

Note: We modify the default FFmpeg build instructions to set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS which are used by CMake.

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export CFLAGS="-mcpu=native" && export CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=native" 
cd ~/ffmpeg_sources && \ 
git -C aom pull 2> /dev/null || git clone --depth 1 https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom && \ 
mkdir -p aom_build && \ 
cd aom_build && \ 
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib/pkgconfig" PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" -DENABLE_TESTS=OFF -DENABLE_NASM=on ../aom && \ 
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make -j $(nproc) && \
make install 

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cd ~/ffmpeg_sources && \
wget -O ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 https://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 && \
tar xjvf ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 && \
cd ffmpeg && \
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib/pkgconfig"   ./configure \
 --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" \
 --pkg-config-flags="--static" \
 --extra-cflags="-I$HOME/ffmpeg_build/include -mcpu=native" \
 --extra-cxxflags="-mcpu=native" \
 --extra-ldflags="-L$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib" \
 --extra-libs="-lpthread -lm" \
 --ld="g++" \
 --bindir="$HOME/bin" \
 --enable-gpl \
 --enable-libaom \
 --enable-libvpx \
 --enable-libx264 \
 --enable-libx265 \
 --enable-nonfree && \
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make -j $(nproc) && \
make install