Trying 2open mp4, error none of them understood this fformat

[AndyFind]

I installed Audacity 1.3 Beta.
I then installed the LAME and FFMpeg stuff.
Everything worked fine for a couple weeks. I would open mp4 files then do some editing then save it as mp3 files. I then copied the mp3's to my portable mp3 player and listened to them while I hike.
I always left an Audacity window open (since I first installed it) so I could come back another day and continue editing more mp4 files I had saved on my PC. One day while I was doing some editing - Audacity crashed and closed. Therefore I had to open it up again (I can't remember if I had to reboot my PC because of the crash or not).
Anyways now I cannot open any of the mp4 files (even the ones I opened before).
I get the following Error message:
Error importing
Audacity recognized the type of the file 'C:MusicAbove All - Michael Smith.mp4'
Importers supposedly supporting such files are:
FFmpeg-compatible files,
but none of them understood this file format.
OK Help

When I click Help another window pops up that says the following:
Unsupported Formats

wma-proprietary


How do I fix this problem? Keep in mind I'm trying to open the same original mp4 files on my PC that I was able to open a week ago before the crash. Therefore I'm just guessing maybe something changed in some setup menu because of the crash and I have to change it back ??????? Thanks!

[kozikowski]

As a baby step, I would probably uninstall FFMpeg and pull down and install it fresh.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Then, when that doesn't work, I would probably trash the Audacity Preferences file and make Audacity start over from First Birthday -- except I don't know how to do that on a Windows machine.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_Preferences

The PC people will be along presently. They're eight time zones away.

Do you know why your machine crashed? As much grief as they get, Windows machines do not crash that often without help. Do you have a hard drive with 20% free space? When was the last time you defragmented? Audacity, and in fact most production software will not run into a full or fragmented hard drive.

Koz

[AndyFind]

Thanks Koz,

Your suggestions got me thinking and I found the problem. I have Windows XP.
I went into the menu -> edit - preferences and noticed Audacity said it could not find the FFmpeg Library. I then clicked Locate and it found it and everything works OK again. Therefore the problem was it forgot where the FFmpeg Library was at.

[steve]

I always left an Audacity window open (since I first installed it)

That's why Audacity "forgot".
Audacity saves the Preferences when the session is closed. If Audacity has not been closed since you first set up FFmpeg, then the setting of where FFmpeg is located would never have been saved.

[AndyFind]

Steve,

Thanks. I understand now.