Hello I installed FFmpeg, long before even looking at audacity. FFmpeg is actually installed on another drive entirely. What my question is “how does one tell audacity the FFmpeg folder (version 3.2.2) is on drive F:\ffmpeg-3.2.2\bin” ? Also what is this dylib? I have an ffmpeg.exe, but no weird things like that. (Yes, hidden folder is on by default and drive is completely indexed) Can I just select the ffmpeg.exe?
You can’t choose ffmpeg.exe in Audacity’s Libraries Preferences. To load FFmpeg via Preferences, you have to install FFmpeg 2.2.2 according to http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#ffdown. You can use a slightly later FFmpeg 2.2.3 but it has to be a “shared” build that includes separate dylib files.
If you want to use the 3.2.2 ffmpeg.exe, the only way to do that is to choose the command-line “(external program)” when you export and include “F:\ffmpeg-3.2.2\bin\ffmpeg.exe” as the first part of the command. See Exporting to an External Program. Note that you cannot use FFmpeg to import files this way - it’s just export.
I agree that it would be better to leverage arbitrary ffmpeg executables rather than be tied to specific (now oudated) versions of shared libraries (DLL files) but we don’t really have the resources to make that change right now.
One possibility might be to accept that using different FFmpeg versions is “advanced usage” and have command-line import like we have command-line export. It might be less work than making the standard export dialogues use ffmpeg executables.