Heres how I got OpenCV installed:

First install some needed packages

sudo apt-get install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev

Now you need to grab FFmpeg for the install to work

svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg

The svn didn’t work for me, probably something to do with the proxy I’m under at Uni so I had to grab the source and compile it:

Download – http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-0.5.tar.bz2

(skip the tar step if you svn the package)

tar -jxvf ffmpeg-0.5.tar.bz2

Configure and install ffmpeg

cd ffmpeg

./configure --enable-shared

make

sudo make install

Next grab a copy of OpenCV (I used OpenCV-2.0.0.tar.bz2 in this guide)

Download – http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/files/opencv-unix/2.0/

tar -jxvf OpenCV-2.0.0.tar.bz2

cd OpenCV-2.0.0

./configure --with-ffmpeg --with-gtk --with-quicktime=false

make

sudo make install

Now you should be setup, try running one of the sample programs to test it:

cd samples/c/

. build_all.sh

./facedetect