Well, it’s time to re-write the rules again. The latest releases of cPanel/WHM have changed the game in a lot of ways, so it’s about time for a re-written guide. This will guide you through installing the latest version of ffmpeg on a cPanel server, along with a number of required libraries. The last update to this post was July 1, 2013.

Some Prerequisites

There are a few things you’ll need to prepare if you’re on a fresh installation.

1. Subversion and some libraries

Subversion is required to download and install ffmpeg and mplayer. We also need to make sure you’ve got a bunch of libraries for all the crap we’re going to custom-compile, so we might as well get that out of the way first.

yum install subversion libXext libXext-devel libcurl libcurl-devel curl curl-devel zlib-devel openssl-devel gettext-devel expat-devel


2. Git

Git is required because for some reason, when you install mplayer, it forces you to download a Git repository of ffmpeg. Don’t use this repository for installing ffmpeg – it breaks with a strange error message. How you install Git will vary across OSes.
cd /usr/local/src
wget https://git-core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.8.3.2.tar.gz
tar -zxf git-1.8.3.2.tar.gz
cd git-1.8.3.2
make prefix=/usr/local all
make prefix=/usr/local install


3. Ruby

Ruby is required for flvtool. You can install this using the cPanel script:

/scripts/installruby

If you're not using cPanel, you can probably install this using your package manager.

4. faac

faac doesn't compile any more, so we're going to install the rpmforge RPM for it instead.

rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/faac/faac-1.26-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm http://pkgs.repoforge.org/faac/faac-devel-1.26-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

If you're not on a CentOS 5.x 64-bit install, check http://pkgs.repoforge.org/faac/ for the package you want.

5. libxvid

The source code for libxvid doesn't compile properly on CentOS in a way that lets it be used as a shared package, so we're going to install the rpmforge RPM for it instead.

rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/xvidcore/xvidcore-1.2.2-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm http://pkgs.repoforge.org/xvidcore/xvidcore-devel-1.2.2-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

If you're not on a CentOS 5.x 64-bit install, check http://pkgs.repoforge.org/xvidcore/ for the package you want.

6. ldconfig

To make sure mplayer and ffmpeg install using the correct libs, we need to make sure ld knows where to find our libraries. First, check:

nano /etc/ld.so.conf

Make sure that this file contains the line:

/usr/local/lib

If you're on a 64-bit system you should also add:

/usr/local/lib64

Save (CTRL+O), exit (CTRL+W), and then update:

ldconfig

If you run in to any "file not found" errors, it's probably ldconfig.

7. Remove any other installations

You might already have ffmpeg installed. If it was compiled in, that's fine, this will overwrite it. But if you have RPM binaries installed, this will cause issues. Run the following:

rpm -qa | grep ffmpeg
rpm -qa | grep mplayer
rpm -qa | grep mencoder

Remove with rpm -e any libraries, common files, or binary installations of these packages to prevent conflicts.

Download All The Things

One note; the official distribution release of ffmpeg-php no longer compiles. Someone forked it and is maintaining a git repository here: https://github.com/tony2001/ffmpeg-php so this is the version we will use for ffmpeg.

1. Let's get started! This step can and probably should be copy/pasted into your terminal all in one block.


cd /usr/local/src
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17497/flvtool2-1.0.6.tgz
tar zxf flvtool2-1.0.6.tgz
wget http://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/lame/lame/3.99/lame-3.99.5.tar.gz
tar zxf lame-3.99.5.tar.gz
git clone https://github.com/tony2001/ffmpeg-php.git ffmpeg-php
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.3.3.tar.gz
tar xzf libvorbis-1.3.3.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.3.1.tar.gz
tar xzf libogg-1.3.1.tar.gz
wget http://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/opencore-amr/opencore-amr/opencore-amr-0.1.3.tar.gz
tar xzf opencore-amr-0.1.3.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.1.tar.bz2
tar xjf libtheora-1.1.1.tar.bz2
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faad2-2.7.tar.gz
tar zxf faad2-2.7.tar.gz
wget http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/releases/yasm-1.2.0.tar.gz
tar zxf yasm-1.2.0.tar.gz
mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs
wget ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20071007.tar.bz2
tar xjf essential-20071007.tar.bz2
svn co svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/gpac/code/trunk/gpac gpac
git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git
cp /usr/local/src/essential-20071007/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/
chmod -R 755 /usr/local/lib/codecs/
mkdir /usr/local/src/tmp
chmod 777 /usr/local/src/tmp
export TMPDIR=/usr/local/src/tmp


2. Now it's time to grab mplayer and ffmpeg, the latest versions possible.


git clone git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer


Let's Compile This Shit!

Alright, now we're down to the good stuff - compilation! Hopefully if the above steps went correctly this will just fly by. However I do not recommend that you copy and paste the entire command tree into the terminal at this point. Run everything one step at a time to catch any errors if they do occur. Google is your friend, but feel free to leave a comment here if you run in to any problems.

1. Lame


cd /usr/local/src/lame-3.99.5/
./configure
make
make install


2. Libogg


cd /usr/local/src/libogg-1.3.1
./configure
make
make install


3. Libvorbis


cd /usr/local/src/libvorbis-1.3.3
./configure
make
make install


4. yasm


cd /usr/local/src/yasm-1.2.0
./configure
make
make install


5. Libx264


cd /usr/local/src/x264
./configure --enable-shared
make
make install


6. Flvtool


cd /usr/local/src/flvtool2-1.0.6
ruby setup.rb config
ruby setup.rb setup
ruby setup.rb install


7. Opencore-amr


cd /usr/local/src/opencore-amr-0.1.3
./configure
make
make install


8. Libtheora


cd /usr/local/src/libtheora-1.1.1
./configure
make
make install


9. faad2


cd /usr/local/src/faad2-2.7
./configure
make
make install


10. MP4Box


cd /usr/local/src/gpac
./configure
make
make install


11. Mplayer - remember, this will download a new version of ffmpeg for some crazy reason. When it asks, just hit enter and allow it to download. It's only used for compiling mplayer.


cd /usr/local/src/mplayer/
./configure --enable-jpeg
make
make install


12. FFMpeg


cd /usr/local/src/ffmpeg
./configure --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvorbis --enable-shared --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-nonfree --enable-libtheora --enable-version3 --enable-gpl --enable-libxvid
make
make install


13. ffmpeg-php


cd /usr/local/src/ffmpeg-php
phpize
./configure
make
make install


14. php.ini - All that's left is to modify your php.ini file! Add the following near the top of the file /usr/local/lib/php.ini (to avoid conflicts)


extension=ffmpeg.so


15. Restart Apache

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

That's It!

At this point you should have a fully functional ffmpeg installation compiled in to PHP. You can test this with the following:


php -m | grep ffmpeg
You should get the output:

ffmpeg

Thank you very much to serverhostingsecrets.com for providing a very stable base for me to build this tutorial on!