"ffmpeg: command not found" - But it's in the current directory? [duplicate]

I'm trying to convert some .png files I have into a movie using ffmpeg. I'm using the tutorial:

The files have names Image001.png, Image002.png, ..., Image500.png, and Image501.png. I manually installed ffmpeg this morning from their website, so I don't have to do step 1. I then proceed to run:

cd Downloads
cd python-meep
cd Images

Where both my images and my folder containing the manually downloaded ffmpeg are located. Next, I type:

ffmpeg -qscale 5 -r 20 -b 9600 -i Image%03d.png movie.mp4

To my surprise, this is the error message I get:

ffmpeg: command not found

What's going on here? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

P.S. Could be relevant that I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.

1 Answer

You either need to supply the full path or the program must be in the search path.

In your case you do not have your current directory (.) in the search path.
Note that this is a good thing. Putting . in your search path allows unwanted things like browsing my homedir and typing 'ls'. (guess which ls will be executed. It is not /bin/ls).

So, supply the path oruse ./ffmpeg (the dot stands for the current directory. So dot slash file means 'that file in this directory'.