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FFmpeg

The encoder underneath nearly everything else, and a capable streamer alone.

Not display-server dependentLGPL-2.1-or-later

Install

Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Pop!_OS

sudo apt install ffmpeg

Fedora, RHEL, Nobara

First, enable the repository:

sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install ffmpeg

Fedora ships a reduced ffmpeg-free by default; the full build with common codecs comes from RPM Fusion.

Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS

sudo pacman -S ffmpeg

openSUSE

sudo zypper install ffmpeg

NixOS, or Nix on any distro

nix profile install nixpkgs#ffmpeg

OBS uses it, your video player uses it, and you can stream with it directly if your setup is simple enough to describe as a command.

For streamers the most common direct use is checking what your hardware can actually encode. ffmpeg -encoders | grep -E 'nvenc|vaapi|qsv' tells you which hardware encoders this build supports, which is the fastest way to find out whether a missing option in OBS is a hardware problem or a packaging one.

On Fedora the distinction between ffmpeg-free and the RPM Fusion build catches people out: the stock build omits several codecs, and the symptom is an encoder that exists on paper but refuses to initialise.