Lame and FFmpeg not working?

New PC, windows 10, downloaded Audacity, no problems, imported some music no problem, but not all. Downloaded Lame then FF mpeg, loaded them up to Libraries, but still won’t allow certain music. The music is an m4a file ‘is an advanced audio coding file. cannot open it. you need to convert it to a supported audio file.’

On my previous Vista PC, every piece of music imported no problem.

Downloaded Lame then FF mpeg, loaded them up to Libraries

To install both, download and run:

“Lame v3.99.3 for Windows.exe”
“ffmpeg-win-2.2.2.exe”

Done that, my preference - ff mpeg library has the file ffmpeg-3.3.2.tar.bz2 and Lame library has (x86)\Lame For Audacity\lame_enc.dll.

Is that how it should be?

LAME looks OK. I have: C:\Program Files\Lame For Audacity\lame_enc.dll.

FFmpeg should be: C:\Program Files\FFmpeg for Audacity*avformat-55.dll*

If you don’t have that DLL file, [u]Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe[/u] should automatically extract the DLL and install it.

A [u]TAR[/u] file is a compressed file (or set of files) similar to a ZIP file. (TAR seems to be popular among Linux users.)

Note that LAME is only for exporting to MP3. Does that work (with WAV or other files you can open)? Audacity can open MP3s without any additional libraries.

FFmpeg is for opening & saving a wide variety of other formats.

In this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHR3ttH5t-w 13 secs, it shows this persons ff mpeg in a yellow zipped folder, mine is a icon like a piece of paper. Opening mine just gives me something in chinesse hehe I can’t do anything with it.

Where is the best place to download ff mpeg?

Also, when i go into the lame folder and try to open the link with the green logo, i go a split second of something that looks like a command box.

Full instructions for installing LAME and FFmpeg are provided in the Audacity manual:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#lame

It sounds like you may have downloaded the wrong file, so I’d suggest that you delete your current versions of LAME / FFmpeg, then run a full anti-virus / anti-malware scan of your system (overnight because it will take ages to do a full scan), then carefully follow the instructions from the Audacity manual.

Try I porting the file as raw data, I had the same issue and it seemed to fix it for me