How to Compile FFmpeg with libdvdread and libdvdnav

This guide walks you through compiling FFmpeg with support for libdvdread and libdvdnav to enable native DVD navigation and extraction capabilities. Because the official FFmpeg mainline does not natively integrate these libraries, building FFmpeg with DVD reading functionality requires installing the development headers, applying the community DVD demuxer patch to the FFmpeg source tree, configuring the build with the required flags, and compiling the final binary.

Step 1: Install Dependencies

You must install the necessary compiler tools, pkg-config, and the development headers for both libdvdread and libdvdnav.

On Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential git nasm yasm pkg-config \
    libdvdread-dev libdvdnav-dev

On Fedora, RHEL, or CentOS:

sudo dnf install -y gcc gcc-c++ git make nasm yasm pkgconf-pkg-config \
    libdvdread-devel libdvdnav-devel

On Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git nasm yasm pkgconf \
    libdvdread libdvdnav

Step 2: Clone the FFmpeg Source Code

Clone the official FFmpeg source code repository into a local directory:

git clone https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg-source
cd ffmpeg-source

To ensure compatibility with available DVD demuxer patches, check out a stable release branch (for example, FFmpeg 6.1 or 7.0):

git checkout release/6.1

Step 3: Apply the libdvdnav / libdvdread Patch

Mainline FFmpeg lacks built-in demuxers for libdvdread and libdvdnav. To compile with these options, apply the external DVD demuxer patch:

  1. Download the ffmpeg-dvdnav patch compatible with your checked-out branch:
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sunshinj/ffmpeg-dvdnav/master/dvdnav.patch
  1. Apply the patch to the source code:
git apply dvdnav.patch

Note: If git apply outputs errors due to minor codebase changes in newer revisions, use patch -p1 < dvdnav.patch to allow fuzzy line matching.

Step 4: Configure FFmpeg

Run the ./configure script. You must pass --enable-gpl because libdvdread and libdvdnav are licensed under the GNU General Public License.

./configure \
    --prefix=/usr/local \
    --enable-gpl \
    --enable-libdvdread \
    --enable-libdvdnav \
    --enable-nonfree

Inspect the output at the end of the configure process to verify that both libdvdread and libdvdnav are listed under enabled external libraries.

Step 5: Compile and Install

Compile FFmpeg using all available CPU cores:

make -j$(nproc)

Once compilation completes without errors, install the binaries to your system:

sudo make install

Update your shared library cache:

sudo ldconfig

Step 6: Verify the Installation

Confirm that the newly compiled FFmpeg binary recognizes the DVD protocol and demuxer:

ffmpeg -demuxers | grep -E "dvd|dvdnav"

You can now use FFmpeg to read directly from a DVD drive, ISO, or directory structure using the DVD protocol:

ffmpeg -i dvdnav:///dev/sr0 -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -c:a aac output.mp4