Audacity Not "Seeing" ffmpeg

Support Software & Applications
1

I’ve been using Audacity for a few years now to edit .m4a files. Within the last week, when I attempt to open such a file, I get a couple of errors:

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Followed by:

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I confirmed that ffmeg is installed on my machine (it has been from its inception). So I navigate to Audacity’s preferences. And sure enough, under “Libraries” is see this:

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image1238×624 53 KB

But when I navigate to the standard directory where the necessary files are located:

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And then select the correct one, the selection doesn’t “take” and audacity still cannot import the file.

The workaround is that I convert to the file to WAV and edit it. But I’m flummoxed as to why the m4a import is suddently failing.

Any help would be appreciated.

2

There was a version change lately. For Audacity you still need ffmpeg4.4. This can be installed in parallel to ffmpeg 2:9.0.1

3

FWIW I have Tenacity, and the only thing it can’t do (until the next update) is directly export opus… so currently I’ll dump wav and convert that for my phone folder.

4

Another option might be to try the appimage directly from Audacity.

5

Thanks. I’ll mark that as a solution. I just found a thread somewhere that says this problem can happen is the version of ffmpeg is ahead of what Audacity expects.