FFMPEG unknown encoder libxvid on Ubuntu using Winff

Problem : Every time you try to encode a video using wiff ( GUI for FFMPEG) in Ubuntu, it would open the terminal and produce an “unknown encoder libxvid” error when you choose xvid encoding. None of the encodings work . Message is always “unknown encoder libxxxx” wher xxxx is the name of the encoder.

Why it happens : your system can’t find the encoders it requires to convert the video into a different format. I think these encoders are not open source so they are not included with standard intallation.

Solution : Install libavcodec-extra-53, which contains ffplay multimedia player, the ffserver streaming server and the Libav audio and video encoder.

I ran on my Ubuntu 12.10

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53

It deleted 2 packages, installed 3 new packages and now wiff works fine.