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How to build and use ffmpeg within android

I am prototyping a fairly simple camera app to test out using MediaRecorder to create a custom camera activity with one snag, I want to set the aspect ratio of recorded videos to a 1x1. Through much research I have found that this is only possible by using a library like FFMPEG to crop each frame of the video to the size I desire.
I have read many tutorials and articles on different ways to build FFMPEG into Android, but most of them are either outdated and use older versions of both the Android NDK and FFMPEG, or more recent ones just do not work when followed. I tried following the popular http://www.roman10.net/how-to-build-ffmpeg-for-android/‎ and a few other similar ones that all lead to an error about a missing pkg-config file because FFMPEG is generally meant to be installed on linux or another OS apparently. I found some information about building FFMPEG in android by using a make-standalone-toolchain.sh file here http://software.intel.com/en-us/android/blogs/2013/12/06/building-ffmpeg-for-android-on-x86 and can't make heads or tails as to how to go about using this method.
This now leads into my question: What is the best/proven way currently to build and use FFMPEG within android applications? If the standalone toolchain method is the way to go, is there any material better than the one listed that is easier to follow? I would even be open to a reliable template application with the FFMPEG Libraries ready to go (if this is possible); although, I would much rather know how to build this into android for future use.
Thank you in advance for any advice or suggestions on this issue.

I have successfully build ffmpeg libraries using
https://code.google.com/p/dolphin-player/
You have to be on Ubuntu to build that.

This is the guide I liked the most: http://www.roman10.net/how-to-build-ffmpeg-with-ndk-r9/
If you need more options, you can take a look at these, which are equally good:
https://github.com/guardianproject/android-ffmpeg
https://github.com/halfninja/android-ffmpeg-x264
https://vec.io/posts/how-to-build-ffmpeg-with-android-ndk
EDIT: I updated the first link with a more recent article (it uses NDK r9).

Running ffplay video within a jframe

I wish to play a video in JFrame. I am already using ffmpeg in my project. As I wish to keep the project light, I am not willing to use other frameworks like JMF or other. I know that I can play video using ffplay. But the problem here is ffplay opens the video in new window when I try
ffplay output.avi
I wish to put that video within my JFrame, like a player. How can I do this?
Request:
Please ask for any other clarifications, details, and suggest improvements or comment what you find wrong before downvoting or voting to close the question:). I will change it. I am really new to Java, I tried searching this but could not find any possible solution.
What I tried? I couln't find anything related to this, so I don't have any code. I am familiar to how to create frames, and can use runtime to ffplay video. But I got no clue how to put that video within my window:(.
All suggestions are welcome if you can suggest me other methods to play the video. But I haven't use any frameworks other than ffmpeg. And do not wish to make the application heavier. So it would be more helpful if it can be achieved using ffplay.

Look at the JMF 2.1.1 - Supported Formats. If the video types you wish to support are covered by the cross-platform1 version of the JMF, or you can find an SPI for the format, I'd say use JMF.
The 'performance pack' version uses natives which are now very old. I would not recommend trying to use them.

How to make H.264 file fast-forwardable in Android application?

I am an intern at company and my 'learning task' is to make Android application in Java, which takes H.264 format videos (at first they will be stored at SD card) and make like a very simple player, which would have the following features:
1.You can pause/play/fast-forward/fast-backward video
2.When you are at certain point of video and it is stopped, you can switch to the same time in a different video (same picture frame index i guess).
How could i do that? Is using Gstreamer a good way? I looked at the poor tutorial available on net and because of my lack of experience in video processing (I've never worked with video in Android applications) I have quite a hard time understanding what is pipelines, also the JNI and even setting up Gstreamer for Eclipse. Is there a better way of doing this? What should I get to know before starting to mess with this program?
Thanks, in advance!

All of your mentioned features are possible in Gstreamer, however, there is a learning curve.
To understand the GStreamer android tutorials, you must first go through the basic tutorials here: http://docs.gstreamer.com/display/GstSDK/Basic+tutorials
If you feel comfortable with the pipeline architecture, then go ahead and set up your android environment (which is no easy task by itself). Gstreamer is a very very powerful framework where you can do almost anything, if you're willing to make the effort to overcome the learning curve.
So i suggest to go ahead in gstreamer only if you have the time and patience, else go for a simpler solution. Unfortunately i'm not familiar with android, so i cannot suggest any. maybe a quick google search will help.

How to create an OpenGL live wallpaper?

I'm trying to find the right approach for creating an Android OpenGL live wallpaper i.e. a way to convert an app written to use GLSurfaceView into a live wallpaper. There appears to be nothing in the official Android documentation about this surprisingly and it's not obvious what to do.
I've found a few discussions about this elsewhere where most end up linking to the following code written an Android developer:
http://www.rbgrn.net/content/354-glsurfaceview-adapted-3d-live-wallpapers
However, the comments on the page suggest there are problems with the code (memory leaks, lock ups). Does anyone know of any alternatives? If I upload a wallpaper to the market, I'd obviously like to avoid complaints caused by buggy code.

I found an open source example that may help you.
http://code.google.com/p/android-deep-wallpaper/
also, it looks like to use open GL, the GL ES code needs to be called from a different thread.
hope this helps :D

There is a library for building OpenGL Live Wallpapers for Android called GLWallpaperService. You can find GLWallpaperService on GitHub. It includes the code you linked to on rbgrn.net but with a few bug fixes included. There are some alternate implementations available as well. Good luck.

Converting audio files(.3gp) to video with Album cover and uploading to YouTube

I have an audio file in .3gp format on my Android device which I wish
to upload to YouTube. I know that YouTube is a video upload site and
that I need to convert this sound file to video.
I just want an image to display all the time the audio is playing.
Google tells me there are number of tools that can help me. But I want
to do this via java code from my Android device.
Please help.
Thanks.

There are tools such as FFMPEG available for free that allow you to, essentially, mix and convert heterogenous streams. That is you can add a bitmap to a video, create video from slide shows and then add sound etc. (See a related question I asked here).
These programs can be executed from within java applications by making Runtime.exec(..) calls.

Sun has an example for stitching multiple JPEGs together into a movie, you can find it here. You should be able to take this example, (its fairly robust), and add what you need to it.

I recommend looking into the Java Media Framework (FAQ)
You can find a vast collection of sample applets/code at the Sun Solutions page. You can find the API on this page. I do hope this is compatible on the Android platform, as I haven't had any personal experience developing for it. But it might be a good place to start.