FFmpeg 9 for Ubuntu (PPA) – Jammy, Noble and Resolute

Ubuntu’s own repositories usually lag several major versions behind upstream FFmpeg, and Ubuntu Pro / ESM machines make this worse by actively pinning an older ESM-provided build over anything newer.
ppa:dersobi/ffmpeg9 packages current FFmpeg 9 (and its full dependency chain – libavcodec, libavfilter, libavformat, libswscale, libswresample, libavutil, plus the codec libraries FFmpeg links against) for Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy), 24.04 (Noble) and 26.04 (Resolute), so you get a modern ffmpeg/ffprobe from apt instead of building from source.

Requirements

Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy), 24.04 (Noble) or 26.04 (Resolute) – amd64
software-properties-common (provides add-apt-repository; installed by default on most Ubuntu images)
If the machine has Ubuntu Pro / ESM enabled, see the pinning note below — without it, apt can silently keep installing the older ESM-provided FFmpeg instead of this PPA’s build.

Installation

Add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dersobi/ffmpeg9
sudo apt update

Install FFmpeg:
```
sudo apt install ffmpeg
```
Confirm the version in use:
```
ffmpeg -version
```
The output should report a 9.x version string.

Ubuntu Pro / ESM: pinning this PPA above ESM

Ubuntu Pro’s ESM channels (esm-apps, esm-infra) pin their own FFmpeg build with an APT priority slightly above a PPA’s default priority (510 vs. 500). Since APT always picks the highest-priority candidate first and only compares version numbers among ties, an ESM-provided ffmpeg package can end up installed even though this PPA’s build carries a higher epoch (for example 10:9.0.1-... vs. ESM’s 7:8.0.1-...). Running apt-cache policy ffmpeg on an affected machine shows the PPA version listed as available, but the ESM version marked *** (the installed candidate).

The fix is a single pin file that raises this PPA’s priority above ESM’s.
Create /etc/apt/preferences.d/dersobi-ffmpeg9.pref:

Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-dersobi-ffmpeg9
Pin-Priority: 1001

Then reinstall:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ffmpeg

"Package: *" here is scoped by the "release o=" origin match, so it only affects packages this PPA actually publishes — it does not force unrelated packages from anywhere else.

Notes

The PPA is maintained per Ubuntu series; a package published for Noble is not automatically available on Jammy or Resolute, and vice versa.
ppa:dersobi/tvheadend builds against this PPA’s FFmpeg and needs it enabled alongside its own PPA — see the separate Tvheadend page.