OBS Studio CMAKE unable to find FFmpeg?

Question

I am trying to install OBS Studio on Debian 8. I tried to follow the official install guide for OBS Studio, but when I try to run cmake -DUNIX_STRUCTURE=1 DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .. I get the following error:

-- OBS_VERSION: 18.0.1-12-g3540e71
CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:136 (message):
  Could NOT find FFmpeg (missing: FFMPEG_AVCODEC_LIBRARIES
  FFMPEG_AVCODEC_INCLUDE_DIRS avcodec avfilter avdevice avutil swscale
  avformat swresample)
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:343 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE)
  cmake/Modules/FindFFmpeg.cmake:151 (find_package_handle_standard_args)
  deps/libff/CMakeLists.txt:4 (find_package)


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "/root/obs-studio/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".

The only solution I could find people giving was to install ffmpeg; however, I have already installed ffmpeg from backports so this does not tell me anything. Based on the error I tried to run apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavfilter-dev libavdevice-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libavformat-dev libswresample-dev and got the following error:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libavcodec-dev : Depends: libavcodec56 (<= 6:11.8-99) but 10:2.6.9-dmo1 is to be installed or
                           libavcodec-extra-56 (<= 6:11.8-99) but it is not going to be installed
                  Depends: libavresample-dev (= 6:11.8-1~deb8u1) but it is not going to be installed
 libavfilter-dev : Depends: libavresample-dev (= 6:11.8-1~deb8u1) but it is not going to be installed
                   Depends: libavfilter5 (= 6:11.8-1~deb8u1) but it is not going to be installed
 libavformat-dev : Depends: libavformat56 (= 6:11.8-1~deb8u1) but 10:2.6.9-dmo1 is to be installed
 libavutil-dev : Depends: libavutil54 (= 6:11.8-1~deb8u1) but 10:2.6.9-dmo1 is to be installed
 libswresample-dev : Depends: libavutil-dev (= 7:3.2.4-1~bpo8+1) but 6:11.8-1~deb8u1 is to be installed
 libswscale-dev : Depends: libswscale3 (= 6:11.8-1~deb8u1) but 10:2.6.9-dmo1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This error persists even using the -f arg. The ffmpeg command has this output, listing all the "missing" libraries:

  libavutil      55. 34.101 / 55. 34.101
  libavcodec     57. 64.101 / 57. 64.101
  libavformat    57. 56.101 / 57. 56.101
  libavdevice    57.  1.100 / 57.  1.100
  libavfilter     6. 65.100 /  6. 65.100
  libavresample   3.  1.  0 /  3.  1.  0
  libswscale      4.  2.100 /  4.  2.100
  libswresample   2.  3.100 /  2.  3.100
  libpostproc    54.  1.100 / 54.  1.100

I have been trying to install obs-studio for three days now and cannot figure out a way around this. What should I do?

Answer 1

Apparently I've run into the same issue as you. I've tried installing ffmpeg 3 different ways (from source, from repository and with ffmpeg_installer) - OBS didn't detect any of these installations.

I've downloaded a .deb-file from the Launchpad and tried installing it, but it said that I've had a bunch of old libs on my Debian 8.8.0 (I'm running stable branch).

What I did is:

1. Upgraded my whole system to the unstable (sid) branch. To do that, I needed to change my etc/apt/sources.list and replace the jessie entries with sid. To upgrade the whole distro, you'll have to run

   apt-get update
   apt-get -u dist-upgrade
   

   after that.

2. Installed missing libfdk-aac1 lib. It's in the non-free branch, so you'll also need to add a non-free repo to your sources.list. Then just run:

   apt-get update
   apt-get install libfdk-aac1
   

3. The last thing was libfontconfig1 lib. Even after upgrading the whole distro to the unstable branch, the lib was still too old for OBS Studio to install. No worries, you can get a newer version from the experimental branch. Add the following line to your sources.list:

   deb http://deb.debian.org/debian experimental main
   

   Then run:

   apt-get update
   apt-get -t experimental install libfontconfig1
   

4. Finally you can now install the deb-package from the Launchpad. I've used the one for Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus):

   dpkg -i obs-studio_18.0.1-0obsproject1~zesty_amd64.deb