New Windows 11 machine, already has (required) a gyan.dev windows version of ffmpeg installed for other purposes. The libraries are some format that audacity doesn’t know / can’t use (.dll.a, .lib)
I’m trying to avoid having multiple versions of ffmpeg installed - I had something like 10 installed on a long-lived windows machine - is there a way to adapt so the two different distributions are compatible?
I’m pretty sure the version of FFMPEG that Audacity uses is specific to Audacity.
Is there really something different about it other than library configuration?
If so that would trump my proliferation problem.
The help page
Says other distributions can be used - if that’s no longer true I guess that advice should be deleted
I wouldn’t expect them to conflict. Audacity should be looking for its version in Program Files → FFmpeg For Audacity and presumably the other copy will be somewhere else where another application can access it, or you can directly access it.
True! Somebody once said the Audacity version has “additional hooks” for Audacity.
I don’t know. You MIGHT have to compile it yourself using the particular Audacity instructions.
Or, I’ve never done this but Exporting using an external encoder program. You have to know the command syntax.
Blockquote
Says other distributions can be used - if that’s no longer true I guess that advice should be deleted
Ok, I think I understand this.
If you want to use, eg the gyan.dev distribution, you have to use an older version
you can find here:
I found this out by digging around in this distribution’s github discussion forum.
The owner said that Audacity currently only could support this version, so that’s
where the right dll’s are provided.
It does seem to work (to the limited extent I’ve tried it).
The other distribution mentioned is too complex for me to figure out (by that I only mean, not worth the effort for this problem).
The “for audacity” version is a couple ffmpeg major versions behind (I think).
I could be wrong about that.
I would say the Audacity doc should be modified to make this clear.
My goal of having only a single ffmpeg to manage going forward probably can’t
be met until Audacity is able to catch up. Or something else happens.
You are looking in the wrong folder. The /bin folder has the .dlls, not the /lib folder.
This is also true! I had for a while the non shared distribution in place due to, well, stupidity. Once I put it in place I didn’t think to look in /bin but in /lib instead.
In any event at least the “gyan” distribution has usable dlls in place in the bin directory in recent versions, despite what other comments and documentation may say.
Probably would be good to update audacity’s documentation to make this clear.
I can’t comment on the other recommended full distribution, it’s more complex to sort thru and I had solved my problem with this one.