How To Install FFmpeg on Debian 9 (Stretch)

FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution for streaming audio and video as well as recording and conversion. It’s also useful to convert multimedia files between various formats. FFmpeg includes libavcodec audio/video codec library in it.

This tutorial will help you to install FFmpeg on Debian 9 (Stretch) system with apt-get.

Step 2 – Install ffmpeg on Debian 9

After enabling the PPA, Lets exec below commands to install FFmpeg on Debian 9 system. This will also install many packages for the dependencies.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ffmpeg

Step 3 – Check FFmpeg Version

After successfully install FFmpeg, let’s check the version installed on the system.

ffmpeg -version

ffmpeg version 3.2.12-1~deb9u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 6.3.0 (Debian 6.3.0-18+deb9u1) 20170516
...

Step 4 – FFmpeg Basic Commands

Here is the list of the ffmepg basic command options used with ffmpeg command line tool.

ffmpeg -version: show version ffmpeg -formats: show available formats ffmpeg -codecs: show available codecs ffmpeg -decoders: show available decoders ffmpeg -encoders: show available encoders ffmpeg -bsfs: show available bit stream filters ffmpeg -protocols: show available protocols ffmpeg -filters: show available filters ffmpeg -pix_fmts: show available pixel formats ffmpeg -layouts: show standard channel layouts ffmpeg -sample_fmts: show available audio sample formats

Click here to read more about ffmpeg on its official site.

Step 5 – Basic Examples

Below are some examples of uses of ffmpeg command line.

Reduce .mov File Size:

ffmpeg -i in.mov -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -crf 20 out.mov

Convert .move To .mp4

ffmpeg -i in.mov -vcodec copy -acodec aac -strict experimental -ab 128k out.mp4