I am using audacity to separate audio from mp4 to export to mp3 file. This has been working wonderfully for a year+ however today when I attempted to import my mp4 file I got an error that the file was not supported without the ffmpeg library. I attempted to reinstall ffmpeg library but still did not have success.
I attempted to uninstall and re-install both audacity and the ffmpeg library and still no success. I am running windows 11 home 64bit. Audacity 3.4.2 64bit.
Any suggestions/solutions would be greatly appreciated!
I do not have an option to manually locate ffmpeg library in audacity either.
If it’s an MP4 video file, the audio is probably encoded in AAC (a more modern successor to MP3). AAC is generally higher quality than MP3 at the same bit rate, and transcoding from one lossy format to another (e.g., from AAC to MP3) can only reduce the quality. AAC is already 26 years old at this point so most modern audio players should be able to play it.
If you have FFMPEG installed and you’re familiar with the command line, you could try something like this (without touching Audacity at all):
Your screenshot is “unusual”, not showing FFmpeg or the option of locating it.
Just something random to try - I have no idea if it will help -
Exit Audacity
Find audacity.cfg
(audacity.cfg should be in Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\audacity.) AppData is “hidden” by default so you’ll have to click View → Show → Hidden Items.
Rename the file to Xaudacity.cfg to “hide it”. (If this works you can delete it later).
When you re-start Audacity it should create a new-fresh .cfg file and that might “clean-up” the installation.
You can also try un-installing Audacity, then deleting or re-naming the .cfg file after uninstalling.
