FFMpeg Library Not Working?

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Sorry if this is the wrong section, or I’m missing something, but my FFMpeg library doesn’t seem to be working.

It’s installed, and I can see it in the Preferences > Libraries Menu but when I try to import say a .ac3 or .aac it says it’s not supported.

I’m using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

Any feedback on how to fix would be appreciated.

2

Can Audacity import this file:
test.ac3 (55.1 KB)
If it can, then FFMpeg is working correctly but the file that you are trying to import is not supported by the build of FFMpeg that you are using.

3

Ah, thanks for clearing that up, its just that it’s happened with another file too (.aac) which opened one time and the next it didn’t so I assumed it was FFMpeg.

So if this is the case, is there anyway I can import the file into Audacity using another build of FFMpeg or another library/plugin? Or would I have to convert it to a supported format? If I had to convert to another format, would it lose some data (i.e. instead of being 6 channels it turns into 2)? Or should I try to edit it with another audio editor? Any recommendations would be highly appreciated.

4

A very old program that I used to use for converting multi-channel AC3: HeadAC3he 0.23a http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mp3-hac3.htm
Download from the download page on: http://www.doom9.org/
(I’ve only ever used it on Windows XP).

For a more recent program you could try: AC3 Decoder 1.2.6 http://www.free-codecs.com/screenshots/AC3_Decoder_screenshots.htm (I’ve not tried this myself).

5

HeadAC3he seems to give me the error ‘Could not find AC3 Header’ or something very similar. AC3 Decoder links to AC3 Filter which doesn’t do what I expect it to.

Thanks for the feedback, Steve, I’ll just look for AC3 decoders and if that fails, I’ll get a different source for the audio file. Appreciate the quick responses!

6

FFmpeg in Audacity does support multi-channel input in principle, so it could be the file you have is not really AC3, as suggested above. SUPER ( http://tinyurl.com/8nu3s7m ) or MediaInfo ( http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download/Windows ) may give you more information.


Gale

7

Thanks a bunch for the help guys, I really appreciate it!

I ended up abandoning the old file since I figured it was more trouble than it’s worth; I got a new source and it works fine as well! (albeit being a bit quieter but I don’t mind). Thanks for the help again, guys!

EDIT: Sorry to do this, but I just found out video files could be imported straight into Audacity instead of using an audio extractor. Very useful feature, might I say. Thanks a bunch though! Now I can use the original audio file.