Install FFmpeg via CLI on Linux box
---
These steps walk through installing a static binary of any ffmpeg version on to your linux machine. If you want to compile from source, there are several ways to do so. [Here's the official guide](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/Ubuntu).
**Tested and works on an AWS EC2 Ubuntu instance, but should work on any Linux machine.**

[http://ffmpeg.org](http://ffmpeg.org)
---

- 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://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/](http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/)  
  - [http://ffmpeg.gusari.org/static/64bit/](http://ffmpeg.gusari.org/static/64bit/)
  - select a version of ffmpeg or use the latest version alias, and `wget` it. Other FFmpeg [static](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_build) builds [available here](http://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-linux).

  `$ wget http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz`

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

  `$ tar xf ffmpeg-release-64bit-static.tar.xz`

- 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
  ```

- Move the contents of your static untarred folder into the parent `/ffmpeg` dir
```
  $ mv * ../
```

- If you want to be able to execute `$ ffmpeg` from any directory, you'll need to create a symlink inside `/usr/bin`:
```
  $ ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg
  $ ln -s /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg/ffprobe /usr/bin/ffprobe #for ffprobe
```
**done.** You are now able to run the `$ ffmpeg` command from anywhere.

credit: [this AWS forum thread](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=332091)