How to Install FFmpeg on Debian 8 or Debian 9

Introduction

FFmpeg is an open source command line tool for video and audio encoding/decoding. Its main features are high speed, quality and small file sizes.

Prerequisites

• A newly deployed Vultr Debian 8 or Debian 9 server instance.
• A sudo user.

Debian 8 “Jessie”

Edit the source list:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines at the end of the file:

# deb-multimedia
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org jessie main non-free
deb-src http://www.deb-multimedia.org jessie main non-free

# jessie-backports
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main

Save (“Ctrl+O“) and close the file (“Ctrl+X“).

Update the package list and install deb-multimedia keyring:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring
sudo apt-get update

Install FFmpeg with the following command:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Debian 9 “Stretch”

Update the package list.

sudo apt-get update

Install FFmpeg.

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Confirm the installation

Now run the following command:

ffmpeg -version

Upon success, you will see information about the installed FFmpeg version. Your setup is now complete.