I have updated Audacity to version 3.7.1 and added the OpenVINO extensions.
When I export audio, the MP3 option is no longer offered.
I found a forum post about this from 2023 and it recommended deleting audacity.cfg. I did that.
I reinstalled v3.7.1 (ran the installer again). Audacity.cfg was recreated anew.
On restarting audacity, the log file has the following entries:
14:48:40: Audacity 3.7.1
14:48:40: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-61.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
14:48:40: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-60.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
14:48:40: FFmpeg libraries loaded successfully from: C:\Program Files\FFmpeg For Audacity\avformat-59.dll
14:48:42: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-61.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
14:48:42: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-60.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
14:48:42: FFmpeg libraries loaded successfully from: C:\Program Files\FFmpeg For Audacity\avformat-59.dll
The MP3 option for export is still missing.
As MP3 is part of the LAME extensions that now install automatically, I believe the bug is there somewhere.
In my Audacity preferences, when I first noticed the missing option, Preferences->Modules told me that mod-mp3 had Failed. I re-enabled it. This made no difference. mod-opus had also failed and I have re-enabled it.
If you’re not doing this already, as a workaround you can export as WAV and use a 3rd-party converter like Kabuu Audio Converter.
A reasonable guess… It must be well-embedded into the code because there are no files named “lame” in the Audacity folders on my computer.
There have been reports here of it getting disabled on some people’s installations and I don’t know why that’s happening either, but usually they are able to re-enable it.
Those avformat and FFmpeg messages aren’t really errors and they are not related to MP3. It just means that the optional FFmpeg library isn’t installed (or isn’t installed correctly). FFmpeg is used for formats that are not built into Audacity (M4A, etc.). WAV and MP3 are built-in.