Building FFmpeg on Vega¶

This guide compiles FFmpeg with H.264 support and installs it into your home directory, so you can make .mp4 videos on Vega.

Note

Written July 16, 2025. Module names and the state of Vega's installed FFmpeg may have changed since then.

Why build it yourself?¶

H.264 is the video format behind most .mp4 files. It gives a good balance of quality and file size, and it plays in nearly every media player, browser and slide deck. FFmpeg can only write H.264 video if it was built with the x264 library. Without x264 it can still read H.264 files, but trying to create an .mp4 will fail or fall back to a less efficient format.

As of July 16, 2025, the FFmpeg installed on Vega was not built with x264. The steps below build x264 and FFmpeg from source and install both under your home directory. No administrator access is needed.

1. Check whether you need this¶

Before building anything, check whether Vega's FFmpeg can encode H.264 now:

module avail ffmpeg
module load <ffmpeg-module-from-the-list>
ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep libx264

If that prints a line containing libx264, the installed FFmpeg already works and you can skip the rest of this page. If it prints nothing, continue.

2. Load the build tools¶

You need a C compiler (gcc) and two assemblers (yasm and nasm), which were available as modules on Vega as of the date above. Run these on the login node:

module purge
module load gcc
module load yasm
module load nasm

Optionally, confirm the assemblers loaded:

yasm --version
nasm --version

3. Choose an install location¶

Pick a folder in your home directory. You can change this path, but use the same value for every step below:

INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/compiled_software/FFmpeg"
echo $INSTALL_DIR

4. Build x264¶

mkdir -p "$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build/src"
cd "$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build/src"
git clone --depth 1 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/x264.git
cd x264
./configure --prefix="$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build" --enable-static --enable-pic
make -j 8
make install

Tip

make -j 8 compiles with 8 parallel processes. The build takes a few minutes and is light enough for the login node, but keep the count modest because the login node is shared by everyone.

Check that the build worked. You should see an x264 binary:

ls "$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build/bin"

5. Build FFmpeg with x264 support¶

mkdir -p "$INSTALL_DIR/FFmpeg_build/src"
cd "$INSTALL_DIR/FFmpeg_build/src"
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg.git
cd FFmpeg

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"

./configure --prefix="$INSTALL_DIR/FFmpeg_build" \
  --pkg-config-flags="--static" \
  --extra-cflags="-I$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build/include" \
  --extra-ldflags="-L$INSTALL_DIR/x264_build/lib" \
  --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-static --disable-shared

make -j 8
make install

Check that the FFmpeg binary was created:

ls "$INSTALL_DIR/FFmpeg_build/bin/ffmpeg"

6. Add FFmpeg to your PATH¶

You could run FFmpeg by its full path every time:

$INSTALL_DIR/FFmpeg_build/bin/ffmpeg -i input_frames/%04d.png -c:v libx264 output.mp4

It's easier to add it to your PATH, so typing ffmpeg in any folder runs your build. This appends the right line to your ~/.bashrc:

echo "export PATH=\"${INSTALL_DIR}/FFmpeg_build/bin:\$PATH\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Confirm that ffmpeg now points at your build and can encode H.264:

which ffmpeg
ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep libx264

Now you can run it from anywhere:

ffmpeg -i input_frames/%04d.png -c:v libx264 output.mp4

Next: Image Sequences to Video