Question: How can install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 Linux system?. FFmpeg is a free and open source multimedia framework used to play, encode, decode, stream, transcode, mux, demux, and filter different formats of multimedia files including MPEG1 audio and video, MPEG4, h263, ac3, asf, avi, real, mjpeg, and flash.

FFmpeg is a cross-platform application as it can run on Linux, macOS, Windows, BSDs, Solaris, etc, under wide variety of build environments, configurations and machine architectures. Most media players available for Linux and Audio/Video downloaders and converters such as youtube-dl require FFmpeg to work.
FFmpeg Tools
These are the main FFmpeg building blocks:
- ffmpeg – Command line tool to convert multimedia files between formats
- ffplay – Simple media player based on SDL and the FFmpeg libraries
- ffprobe – Simple multimedia stream analyzer
FFmpeg also contain Libraries for developers – libavutil, libavcodec, libavformat, libavdevice, libavfilter, libswscale and libswresample.
The transcoding process in ffmpeg
for each output can be described by the following diagram:

How To Install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8
Follow the next steps discussed here to install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 Linux distribution. You should have access to your CentOS / RHEL 8 system before you continue.
Step 1: Install RPMfusion Yum Repository
The RPM Fusion repository was created to provide software not shipped by Fedora and Red Hat based distributions. All software applications available in this repository are provided as precompiled RPM files. We’ll install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 from RPMfusion repository.
You need to enable EPEL on RHEL or compatible distributions like CentOS before you enable RPM Fusion for EL.
sudo dnf -y install https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
Add it to your system using the commands below.
sudo dnf localinstall --nogpgcheck https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-8.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install --nogpgcheck https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-8.noarch.rpm
Accept installations.
...........................
Dependencies resolved.
===================================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
rpmfusion-free-release noarch 8-0.1 @commandline 11 k
Transaction Summary
===================================================================================================================================================
Install 1 Package
Total size: 11 k
Installed size: 3.7 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
.........................
Dependencies resolved.
===================================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
rpmfusion-nonfree-release noarch 8-0.1 @commandline 11 k
Transaction Summary
===================================================================================================================================================
Install 1 Package
Total size: 11 k
Installed size: 3.8 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Step 2: Install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 Linux
Once you’ve added EPEL and RPM Fusion repositories, run the following commands in your terminal to install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 Linux system.
sudo dnf install http://rpmfind.net/linux/epel/7/x86_64/Packages/s/SDL2-2.0.10-1.el7.x86_64.rpm sudo dnf install ffmpeg
A number of dependencies will be installed, verify and agree to installation.
Last metadata expiration check: 0:04:09 ago on Mon 30 Sep 2019 01:32:31 AM EAT.
Dependencies resolved.
===================================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
ffmpeg x86_64 4.2.1-2.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 1.4 M
Installing dependencies:
libva x86_64 2.1.0-1.el8 AppStream 92 k
libvdpau x86_64 1.1.1-7.el8 AppStream 40 k
ocl-icd x86_64 2.2.12-1.el8 AppStream 51 k
openal-soft x86_64 1.18.2-7.el8 AppStream 394 k
libatomic x86_64 8.2.1-3.5.el8 BaseOS 20 k
jack-audio-connection-kit x86_64 1.9.12-8.el8 epel 519 k
libaom x86_64 1.0.0-8.20190810git9666276.el8 epel 1.6 M
libass x86_64 0.14.0-4.el8 epel 110 k
libmfx x86_64 1.25-4.el8 epel 36 k
soxr x86_64 0.1.3-4.el8 epel 97 k
vid.stab x86_64 1.1.0-12.20190213gitaeabc8d.el8 epel 47 k
zvbi x86_64 0.2.35-9.el8 epel 424 k
ffmpeg-libs x86_64 4.2.1-2.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 7.2 M
libavdevice x86_64 4.2.1-2.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 96 k
opencore-amr x86_64 0.1.5-7.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 180 k
vo-amrwbenc x86_64 0.1.3-8.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 77 k
x264-libs x86_64 0.157-11.20190717git34c06d1.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 651 k
x265-libs x86_64 3.1.2-1.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 1.9 M
xvidcore x86_64 1.3.5-5.el8 rpmfusion-free-updates 268 k
Transaction Summary
===================================================================================================================================================
Install 20 Packages
Total download size: 15 M
Installed size: 52 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Install development libraries by running the command\:
sudo dnf -y install ffmpeg-devel
Step 3: Check FFmpeg Version on CentOS / RHEL 8
Check the version of FFmpeg installed on your RHEL/CentOS system using the command.
$ rpm -qi ffmpeg
$ ffmpeg -version
Output.

Step 4: Using FFmpeg on CentOS / RHEL 8
The usage of ffmpeg depends on individual projects and desired output. Refer to the official FFmpeg documentation for an in-depth description of its features and examples.
Other example is Converting mp4/mkv/WebM to mp3 on Linux with FFmpeg
If you want to download Videos from YouTube, check:
Annie – Fastest YouTube Video Downloader for Linux
You can also get all command line options from:
$ ffmpeg --help
Thank you for using our guide to install FFmpeg on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8. Check other articles,
Best LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 certification study books
Best Linux Books for Beginners & Experts
How To Setup a TFTP server on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8
How To Install GLPI on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8