A Comprehensive Guide to Installing and Configuring OpenCV 2.3.1 on Ubuntu

This guide describes how to install and configure OpenCV 2.3.1 and its dependencies on Ubuntu. It is a compilation of my notes recorded during dozens of OpenCV installs on several different systems. This guide differs from other OpenCV guides in the following ways:

1. This guide is comprehensive: you can start with a clean Ubuntu and successfully install OpenCV 2.3.1 by following this guide.
2. This guide is for OpenCV 2.3.1. The other guides I found used previous versions of OpenCV.
3. This guide includes all of the steps you need to use a webcam with OpenCV.

Credit and thanks go to FakeOutdoorsman and Sebastian Montabone for their excellent posts, upon which several of the steps in this guide are based.

If you need help troubleshooting OpenCV installation problems, see the companion guide “A Comprehensive OpenCV Installation Troubleshooting Guide.”

 

The Installation Procedure

To install and configure OpenCV 2.3.1, complete the following steps.

1. Remove any installed versions of ffmpeg and x264 by entering the following command:

sudo apt-get remove ffmpeg x264 libx264-dev

2. Get all the dependencies for x264 and ffmpeg by entering the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
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

3. Download and install gstreamer by entering the following command:

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

4. Download and install install x264.
   1. Download a recent stable snapshot of x264 fromftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/. The exact version does not seem to matter. To write this guide, I used version x264-snapshot-20110808-2245-stable.tar.bz2, but I have used previous versions too.
   2. Configure and build the x264 libraries by entering the following commands:

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

5. Download and install install ffmpeg.
   1. Download ffmpeg version 0.8.x fromhttp://ffmpeg.org/download.html. Note: Versions of OpenCV prior to 2.3.1 require ffmpeg 0.7.x.
   2. Configure and build ffmpeg by entering the following commands in a terminal:

./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

6. Download and install gtk by entering the following command:

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

7. Download and install libjpeg by entering the following command:

sudo apt-get install libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev

8. Download and install install v4l (video for linux).
   1. Download v4l-utils-0.8.5.tar.bz2 fromhttp://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-utils/
   2. Build v4l by entering the following commands in a terminal:

make
sudo make install

9. Download and install install OpenCV.
   1. Download OpenCV version 2.3.1 fromhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/files/
   2. Use the following command to untar the source files

tar xvf OpenCV-2.3.1.tar.bz2
cd OpenCV-2.3.1/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..

3. 3. Check that the output of cmake includes the following text:
      • found gstreamer-base-0.10
      • GTK+ 2.x: YES
      • FFMPEG: YES
      • GStreamer: YES
      • V4L/V4L2: Using libv4l

Note: In versions of OpenCV prior to 2.3.1, the binary digit 1 was used instead of the word YES, like this: FFMPEG: 1.

4. 4. Run make
   5. Run sudo make install

10. Configure Linux.
    1. Tell linux where the shared libraries for OpenCV are located by entering the following shell command:
       

       export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

       Add the command to your .bashrc file so that you don’t have to enter every time your start a new terminal.

       Alternatively, you can configure the system wide library search path. Using your favorite editor, add a single line containing the text/usr/local/lib to the end of a file named/etc/ld.so.conf.d/opencv.conf. Using vi, for example, enter the following commands:

       sudo vi /etc/ld.so.conf.d/opencv.conf
G
o
/usr/local/lib
<Esc>
:wq!

    2. Using your favorite editor, add the following two lines to the end of /etc/bash.bashrc:
       

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

    3. Reboot.

After completing the previous steps, your system should be ready to compile code that uses the OpenCV libraries. The following example shows one way to compile code for OpenCV:

g++ `pkg-config opencv --cflags` my_code.cpp  -o my_code `pkg-config opencv --libs` 

 

References

• If you encounter problems installing OpenCV, see the companion guide, “A Comprehensive OpenCV Installation Troubleshooting Guide.”
• Sebastian Montabone has several articles on installing OpenCV and image processing. His web site is http://www.samontab.com/
• FakeOutdoorsman’s posted an excellent dependency install guide, which is located on the Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095