FFmpeg Will Be Added (Again) To The Default Repositories Of Ubuntu, Starting With Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

Hello Linunx Geeksters. Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu has stopped shipping with the FFmpeg libraries and used Libav for handling multimedia content, but the developers have announced that FFmpeg will be available by default again, starting with Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet.

For those who don’t know, Libav is a FFmpeg fork, developed in 2011. While Libav does its own development, the most important Libav changes get merged to FFmpeg, so many Ubuntu developers prefer it.

Because both Libav and FFmpeg use the same library names, all the FFmpeg libraries from Ubuntu 15.04 will be using a -ffmpeg suffix, so that Libav and FFmpeg will be able to coexist.

For now, FFmpeg 2.4.3 has been imported from Debian Testing to Ubuntu 15.04, being available via the default repos, but the same ffmpeg version can be easily installed on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr and derivative systems like Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Deepin 2014, Peppermint Five, LXLE 14.04 and Linux Lite 2.0 via the FFmpeg Next PPA. Like this:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kirillshkrogalev/ffmpeg-next
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Optional, to remove ffmpeg and revert the changes, do:

$ sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:kirillshkrogalev/ffmpeg-next