• SSH into your instance and become root

  $ sudo su -

• cd to the the /usr/local/bin directory

  $ cd /usr/local/bin

• Inside the /usr/local/bin directory, create an "ffmpeg" directory

  $ mkdir ffmpeg

• cd into the new directory

  $ cd ffmpeg

• Check the static build directory at http://ffmpeg.gusari.org/static/64bit/, select a version of ffmpeg or use the latest version alias, and wget it

  $ wget http://ffmpeg.gusari.org/static/64bit/ffmpeg.static.64bit.latest.tar.gz

• The file should now be in /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg. Untar it...

  $ tar -xzf ffmpeg.static.64bit.2014-02-16.tar.gz

• Run it and check what the latest version is

  $ ./ffmpeg -version

The output should look something like this

ffmpeg version N-60675-g8fe1076
built on Feb 16 2014 05:45:47 with gcc 4.6 (Debian 4.6.3-1)
configuration: --prefix=/root/ffmpeg-static/64bit --extra-cflags='-I/root/ffmpeg-
static/64bit/include -static' --extra-ldflags='-L/root/ffmpeg-static/64bit/lib -static' --
extra-libs='-lxml2 -lexpat -lfreetype' --enable-static --disable-shared --disable-ffserver --
disable-doc --enable-bzlib --enable-zlib --enable-postproc --enable-runtime-cpudetect --
enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libmp3lame --
enable-gray --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libspeex --
enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-version3 --enable-libvpx
libavutil 52. 64.100 / 52. 64.100
libavcodec 55. 52.102 / 55. 52.102
libavformat 55. 32.101 / 55. 32.101
libavdevice 55. 9.101 / 55. 9.101
libavfilter 4. 1.102 / 4. 1.102
libswscale 2. 5.101 / 2. 5.101
libswresample 0. 17.104 / 0. 17.104
libpostproc 52. 3.100 / 52. 3.100

• If you want to be able to execute FFMPEG from any directory, simply create a symlink into /usr/bin like this:

  $ ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg

done. You are now able to run the ffmpeg command from anywhere.

credit: this AWS forum thread