Unknown encoder ‘x264’ in FFmpeg despite following proper installation instructions

ffmpegx264

I’m having an issue with FFmpeg after configuring it exactly to their own wiki’s instructions where I’m receiving the following:

ffmpeg -stats -i uncompressed.video.mkv -codec x264 -preset veryslow -pass 2 -an compressed.video.mkv
[Removed for readability]
Unknown encoder 'x264'

Attempting the same with libx264 instead of x264 results in a similar error:

Invalid encoder type 'libx264'

So I ran:

~$ ffmpeg -codecs | grep x264

And got:

ffmpeg version 2.6.git Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 4.7 (Debian 4.7.2-5)
  configuration: --prefix=/home/hindenpeter/ffmpeg_build --extra-cflags="-I/home/hindenpeter/ffmpeg_build/include --extra-ldflags=-L/home/hindenpeter/ffmpeg_build/lib --bindir=/home/hindenpeter/bin --enable-gpl --enable-libass --enable-libfdk-aac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree
  libavutil      54. 20.100 / 54. 20.100
  libavcodec     56. 29.100 / 56. 29.100
  libavformat    56. 26.101 / 56. 26.101
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5. 13.101 /  5. 13.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  1.100 /  1.  1.100
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
 DEV.LS h264                 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (encoders: libx264 libx264rgb )

As far as I can tell, ffmpeg was configured with --enable-libx264, and a simple ls of ~/bin reveals that I did in fact install it from source as outlined in the guide I linked above.

So can anyone help me figure out exactly what I did wrong, and how I can fix it?

Best Answer

Try this:

ffmpeg -stats -i uncompressed.video.mkv -vcodec libx264 -preset veryslow -pass 2 -an compressed.video.mk

or this:

ffmpeg -stats -i uncompressed.video.mkv -codec:v libx264 -preset veryslow -pass 2 -an compressed.video.mk
Related Question