Audacity Forum

My iMac is running 10.6.4 with

audacity 1.3.12-beta installed in /Applications/Audacity/
LAME 3.98.2 installed in /Library/Application Support/audacity/ with 775 root/wheel
FFmpeg 0.6 installed in /Library/Application Support/audacity/ with 755 root/wheel

Audacity is able to find and load libmp3lame.dylib just fine but not libavformat.52.dylib. It would be nice if Audacity would give me a hint as to why it won't load the library. I tried to set Enable=1 in audacity.cfg, but that did not help.

I would appreciate any help offered...

Thanks.

Those are not the standard locations for those two libraries, but any location should work.

Did you download the ffMPEG installer from the link provided on this page? http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... tallffmpeg

If so, and you ran the .pkg installer, all the ffMPEG libraries should have been installed into /usr/local/lib/audacity/ . If so, Audacity should find them automatically if you go to Audacity > Preferences, then the Libraries panel. If not, you will have to click the "Locate" button, then the "Browse" button in the following dialog and navigate to the folder containing the libraries.

-- Bill

I don't know why Audacity can't find it in /Library/Application Support/audacity/, but I reinstalled in /usr/local/lib/audacity/ and chmod 755 the lib directory and it started working.

I have several brand new i-Macs with OSX 10.6.4 and a MacPro laptop. I have sucessfully loaded all on the laptop, but using the same procedure, cannot get the i-Macs to find the FFmpeg library, even after loading it in a sub-directory of the application. I can now browse to the file, see the file, check the spelling of the file name, but Audacity can't "find it."

What in the world makes this different on 11 i-Macs from my laptop running the exact same OSX, using the same downloads, the same procedure, the same links? I have reviewed all my installation procedures with our Mac IT guru, who says I have followed all procedures exactly, but the FFmpeg just won't be recognized on any machine. Any ideas?

<<<my laptop running the exact same OSX, using the same downloads, the same procedure, the same links? >>>

You forgot The Same Permissions.

Go > Utilities > Disk Utilities > Verify Disk and Repair Permissions.

Koz

Wow -- quick response, with something not yet suggested -- I'M IMPRESSED!

Unfortunately, it did not fix the problem. I did notice it deleted the dylib files I loaded in another folder to find them easily, but Audacity could not find them before or after I reloaded them. I tried verifying & repairing the disk permissions several times, with and without restarts, and still not luck.

Any other ideas? Thanks for the read and any responses!

Do you have any other versions of FFMpeg on the i-Macs?

I'm pleased to say this is now working fine -- it seems when I was set up with admin privileges, not all admin priveleges are created equal!
I did not have the privilege to install the FFmpeg into the necessary root folders. Once that was corrected, I ran a script file to delete the old installations, then re-installed the FFmpeg, then went to preferences and searched for it again. Audacity discovered the file immediately, and all works fine now. Thank you so much for the assistance!

Administrator, 'root', and koz with administrator privileges are not the same. Apple suggests strongly that if you don't need a root account that you leave it out.

Koz

Chief_Engineer wrote:I'm pleased to say this is now working fine -- it seems when I was set up with admin privileges, not all admin priveleges are created equal!
I did not have the privilege to install the FFmpeg into the necessary root folders. Once that was corrected, I ran a script file to delete the old installations, then re-installed the FFmpeg, then went to preferences and searched for it again. Audacity discovered the file immediately, and all works fine now. Thank you so much for the assistance!

There are several inter-related problems with FFmpeg on OS X 10.6.4. First, we don't autodetect the library as we do for LAME, where you just export as an MP3 and it works without going into Preferences. This means we get potential runtime conflicts if there other versions of FFmpeg on the system.

Then, we install FFmpeg and LAME into /usr/local/lib. This is standard for a library on OS X, and It's understandable if you might have to give the admin password to install the libraries, but you should not (and did not used to) need more privileges than that. Installing FFmpeg into /usr/local/lib thus means if Audacity doesn't find FFmpeg when you press "Locate" in its Preferences, you again have to be logged in as an administrator to be able to navigate to it using "Browse" in "Locate FFmpeg".

Then there seem to be significant permissions issues with OS X 10.6.4 (especially but not exclusively if you upgrade to 10.6.4 from a previous OS X version). Go > Utilities > Disk Utilities > Verify Disk and Repair Permissions often doesn't fix this, nor even

sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/local/lib/audacity

if some reports are to be believed. I've had several reports this week of people with brand new Macs on 10.6.4 who have /usr (or /usr/local/lib) locked out with "no entry" when you show those folders in Finder. This means that even if Audacity detects FFmpeg or LAME, it says it cannot open the library when you try to use it. A potted version of the solution is to mark the locked folder in FInder, hit CMD+I (Apple+I), then in the window that opens, add rights for the admin or other groups to read the folder. I wonder if this was essentially Chief_Engineer's problem?

Further, on the basis of what two users have told me, Apple support reps are saying it's wrong to install libraries in /usr, and that they should be in the "Applications" folder because OS X 10.6.4 now read-locks /usr. Is that line really correct, or are the reps really covering for the well-publicised permissions problems that 10.6.4 can create?


Gale