Anyone who has spent time with FFmpeg and its plethora of compile flags and dependencies I’m sure would tell you “its a real pain in the ass!”.

Although its not available through the default yum libraries you can save yourself a huge amount of time by using the FFmpeg install available through the DAG repository.

First you will need to add DAG to your YUM repo by adding the latest RPM Forge release if you do not already have it on your system, I like to use the RHEL RPM:

rpm -Uhv http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Now all you will need to do to get FFmpeg running is one line through shell:

yum install ffmpeg

To test your install type:

ffmpeg --help

If you need to access the binary from a script, it should be located in /usr/bin/ffmpeg by default.

Apple is nice enough to shield its users from the clutter of hidden files on our systems. However, any web developer who works with those files I am sure could tell you what a pain it is to not have those files available though finder.

Anyone ever tried to publish a web app to production only to forget about the .htaccess?

Open a Terminal windows and type to show hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Open a Terminal windows and type to hide hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

What do these lines do? The first will update the Finder setting that controls the view option for hidden files. The second line will force finder to restart so the setting can take effect. Do note however if you have any finder windows open; they will close!