From BlenderWiki

We've been asked plenty of times how to update FFmpeg on your system to be able to build Blender on Linux again.

Update FFmpeg for Linux

Use pre-compiled static libs

You can use compiled FFmpeg libraries which are used in our release build environment. They are available for both of 32 and 64 bit plaforms. To use this libraries create the lib/ folder near the folder which contains blender sources:

# For 32bit platform
svn co https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/linux
 
# For 64bit platform
svn co https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/linux64

So directory structure would look like

  ./
  |- blender
  |  |- build_files
  |  |- release
  |  |- SConstruct
  |   - ...
  |- lib
     |- linux
        |- ffmpeg

After you've checked out libraries, the following changes have to be done to build configuration.

SCons

If you don't have user-config.py, create it in the root of blender working tree.

After this toy should put the following content into this file:

# Choose one of this two lines
BF_FFMPEG = "#../lib/linux/ffmpeg"    # for 32bit platform
BF_FFMPEG = "#../lib/linux64/ffmpeg"  # for 64bit platform
 
# This lines are common for both of 32 and 64 bit platforms
WITH_BF_STATICFFMPEG = True
BF_FFMPEG_LIB_STATIC = '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libavformat.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libswscale.a ' + \
    '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libavcodec.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libavdevice.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libavutil.a ' + \
    '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libxvidcore.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libx264.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libmp3lame.a ' + \
    '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libvpx.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libvorbis.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libogg.a ' + \
    '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libvorbisenc.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libtheora.a ' + \
    '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libschroedinger-1.0.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/liborc-0.4.a ${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libdirac_encoder.a ' + \
    '${BF_FFMPEG_LIBPATH}/libfaad.a'

If you've got already BF_FFMPEG* settings in user-config.py -- replace them with this settings.

CMake

The following settings should be added to cmake rules:

FFMPEG=/home/path/to/cloned/lib/ffmpeg
FFMPEG_LIBRARIES:STRING="avformat;avcodec;avutil;avdevice;swscale;dirac_encoder;mp3lame;ogg;orc-0.4;schroedinger-1.0;theora;theoraenc;theoradec;vorbis;vorbisenc;vpx;x264;xvidcore;faad;asound;jack"

FFMPEG should point to ffmpeg/ folder inside of checked out from the svn linux/ folder for 32bit platofrms and for ffmpeg/ inside linux64/ folder for 64bit platforms.

If you're using cmake, pass this settings as arguments adding -D prefix to them.

Use already packaged versions for your distro

You can also search in the (non-)official repositories for your distro, you might very well find the packages you need. Below is a list a known repositories:

Debian

• debian-multimedia.org

Fedora

• atrpms.net has a 0.8 package.
• rpmfusion.org has only a 0.7 package currently.

Gentoo

0.8.2 already in its official source repository.

Compile FFmpeg yourself

Generic distro

First of all you need to download FFmpeg sources:

wget -c http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-0.8.2.tar.bz2

Then unpack it:

tar -xf ffmpeg-0.8.2.tar.bz2

After this you can build FFmpeg:

cd ffmpeg-0.8.2.tar
./configure --prefix=/opt/ffmpeg-0.8.2 --enable-shared
make
sudo make install

This sequence of commands will compile and install fresh FFmpeg to /opt/ffmpeg-0.8.2 folder. If configuration script fail, install developer package for library reported as missed and run that sequence again from ./configure step.

Next thing to do is add new FFmpeg to search path:

echo "/opt/ffmpeg-0.8.2/lib" | sudo tee -a /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ffmpeg.conf
sudo ldconfig

After this, make the following changes to build rules:

SCons

Add the following line to your user-config.py:

BF_FFMPEG = "/opt/ffmpeg-0.8.2"

CMake

Use the following parameter when configuring CMake:

FFMPEG=/opt/ffmpeg-0.8.2

If you're using cmake, it'll be something like this:

cmake path/to/sources -DFFMPEG="/opt/ffmpeg-0.8.2"