Building Omxplayer for Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi

This version of the omxplayer, is nearly identical to the one I published for Debian on the Raspberry Pi, except that it can be built for Raspbian. The same github repository serves to build omxplayer for both Raspbian and Debian. To configure the build for one or the other, the RASPBIAN variable must be set as described below in the Makefile.include.

This means that the primary differences between this and the default build of omxplayer still are:

Default output is HDMI (no need for -o hdmi)
Clears the screen and doesn't output anything unless there is an error
Makefiles have been customized to perform a native build on the Raspberry Pi
There is the ability to install or uninstall using the Makefiles
There is the ability to make sources or make sources-clean to download or remove the firmware and ffmpeg dependencies
Everything installs under /usr/local
It is possible to install this pre-built omxplayer for Raspbian Wheezy or Debian Squeeze

Preparing to Build Omxplayer

First, make sure your firmware is up-to-date, as described in Keeping Your Raspberry Pi Fresh:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Install software needed to perform the update:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo apt-get install ca-certificates git-core binutils libboost1...-dev libva1 libpcre3-dev

Download the script:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update

Copy the script to /usr/local/bin:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo cp rpi-update /usr/local/bin/rpi-update

Make the script executable:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/rpi-update

To compile this successfully, use a 240/16MB RAM split between system and GPU:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo rpi-update 240
pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo reboot

Next, make sure proper ownerships are in place, go to the local src directory, and clone the git repository for my omxplayer fork:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo chown pi:pi /usr/local/src/
pi@raspberrypi:src $ cd /usr/local/src
pi@raspberrypi:src $ git clone https://github.com/wrightrocket/omxplayer

At this point, the pre-built omxplayer could also be installed on your system if you are using Raspbian Wheezy, Debian Wheezy or Debian Squeeze. If you wish to skip compiling omxplayer, and use a pre-built version, complete the next step, and then skip to using omxplayer:

sudo /usr/local/src/omxplayer/install-raspbian-wheezy

sudo /usr/local/src/omxplayer/install-debian-wheezy

The Debian Wheezy build has been tested to work on both Wheezy and Squeeze.

Building the Omxplayer

Before building, be sure to set update the Makefile.include file for the RASPBIAN variable. If building under Debian, then RASPBIAN=0 is appropriate. If building under the Raspbian OS, then update this file where RASPBIAN=1. The RASPBIAN variable determines whether hardfp or softfp is used.

If you are building this under Raspbian, and not Debian, then use vi, vim, nano, leafpad or some other editor to modify the RASPBIAN variable at the top of the /usr/local/src/omxplayer/Makefile.include file to set RASPBIAN=1.

Even after getting the configuration right for building, my first few attempts failed because of insufficient RAM. This is the reason a different RAM split is used during the build process than when using the player. The build sequence is:

Change to the directory where the source code is located

cd /usr/local/src/omxplayer/

Next, the firmware and ffmpeg sources will be downloaded. The firmware is about 427 MB and ffmpeg is about 60MB. This step took about 16 minutes on my connection.

make sources

The longest part of the process is compiling the ffmpeg libraries. Under Raspbian this step took about the same amount of time as under Debian. This step took about 131 minutes.

make -f Makefile.ffmpeg

After the libraries are built, then they are stripped and copied to the /usr/local/src/omxplayer/ffmpeg_compiled directory. This step is very quick.

make -f Makefile.ffmpeg install

Now, omxplayer is ready to be compiled. It should only take about 6 minutes.

make

The last step of building should create a /usr/local/src/omxplayer/omxplayer-dist.tar.gz that will be used to install omxplayer and the ffmpeg libraries.

make dist

Finally, install omxplayer:

sudo make install

Using the Omxplayer

To use omxplayer, the system must allocate at least 64MB of RAM for the GPU. Run the script and make sure there is a 192/64 Mb of RAM split between the system and GPU. A split of 128/128 can also be used:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo rpi-update 192
pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo reboot

To play videos, just execute the omxplayer script

omxplayer --help

pi@raspberrypi:~$ omxplayer LMFAO.mp4

View comments

Greg4/16/2013 07:59:00 PM
I've greatly simplified building omxplayer on an RPi. Check out my commentary, instructions, and GitHub link at:
http://prng.blogspot.com/2013/04/building-omxplayer-on-raspberry-pi.html
Anonymous5/20/2013 04:38:00 AM
Hi, I followed your instruction exactly(except rpi-update, faced error so i apt-get install rpi-update and sudo rpi-update). After I do a "sudo make -f Makefile.ffmpeg" and im getting "gcc is unable to create an executable file.". Please help, thanks.

Building Omxplayer for Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi