Build OpenCV with Video Support on Ubuntu

If you are experiencing issues decoding videos with OpenCV, your best bet may to be to rebuild x264 & ffmpeg from source.

Install Dependencies

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall 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 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 libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-dev libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev libv4l-dev

Download, build, and install latest x264

$ tar -xf ~/Downloads/last_stable_x264.tar.bz2
$ cd x264-snapshot-<version>-stable
$ ./configure --enable-shared --enable-pic
$ make
$ sudo make install

Download, build, and install latest ffmpeg

$ tar -xf ~/Downloads/ffmpeg-<version>
$ cd ffmpeg-<version>
$ ./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 --enable-shared --enable-pic
$ make
$ sudo make install

Rebuild & reinstall opencv