Unknown input format: 'x11grab'

Question

guys:

I have problems when i compile ffmpeg and run ffmpeg in linux.

My environment:

1: ubuntu 17.10_x64_bit(i don't think the os version is the key)

2: gcc (Ubuntu 6.3.0-19ubuntu1) 6.3.0 20170618

3: ffmpeg open source code:3.2

first, i download the source code from ffmpeg official site. I compile this project with there instructions：

./configure --prefix=/home/jjh/software/ffmpeg --enable-shared
make
make install

and it worked without any error except some warning, then i run:

./ffmpeg -h

i make sure that it works and output normally.

but i want use ffmpeg to grabbing screen. so i use this construction(o):

ffmpeg -f x11grab -video_size cif -framerate 25 -i :0.0 /tmp/out.mpg

then output error:

Unknown input format: 'x11grab'

i want to re-compile this project with --enable-x11grab option, btw , so many solution tell me to to this. but when i add this option, i get some errors:

Invalid option --enable-x11grab

some people says that i should install some libs:

libxfixes-dev
sudo apt-get install libxext-dev

so i installed these libs, but it always show this error. pls help me.

Answer 1

I believe x11grab is deprecated in this version of ffmpeg, though they only write this to Changelog in version 3.3.

If you drag a git version of ffmpeg and check git log, you can see several commits around Mar 15 2017, 5ed4644d6d 4fef648d10 and others, which remove legacy x11grab references.

The alternative of x11grab is called xcbgrab in ffmpeg (higher than 3.2), that can be built with --enable-libxcb.