Install Opencv 2.3.1 on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

Here are instructions for installation of Opencv 2.3.1 on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. For opencv installation we need FFmpeg, x264, v4l and their dependencies. It is a bit longer process as compared to windows installations. Step by step process is shown below.

1. Install dependencies for FFmpeg and x264
Enter following lines in terminal to check and install dependencies.

  
sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall git cmake libfaac-dev libjack-jackd2-dev libmp3lame-dev libopencore-amrnb-dev libopencore-amrwb-dev libsdl1.2-dev libtheora-dev libva-dev libvdpau-dev libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libxfixes-dev libxvidcore-dev texi2html yasm zlib1g-dev
 

2. Install Gstreamer by entering following lines in terminal

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-dev gstreamer0.10-tools gstreamer0.10-plugins-base libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
 

3. Download recent version (0.8+)of FFmpeg from https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg extract it and go to the directory. Now configure and install FFmpeg by entering following commons one by one.

./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab
make
sudo make install
 

4. Install recent version of x264 from ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/ extract it and go to the directory. Now configure and install x264 by entering following commons one by one.

./configure --enable-static
make
sudo make install
 

5. Download video for linux v4l libs from http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-utils/ extract it and go to the directory. Install v4l using following command.

make
sudo make install
 

6. Install gtk libs using apt-get

sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-dev
 

7. Install libjpeg using following command

sudo apt-get install libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev
 

8. Now our dependencies are complete. We can install Opencv now. Download Opencv from http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/files/opencv-unix/ Extract it and go to the directory. Enter following command to configure and install Opencv

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
 

We are done with installing Opencv on ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. In order to set path open /etc/bash.bashrc using your favorite text editor and add following lines

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH
 

Restart your system and you are ready to use awesome Opencv!