Hi, first post. I’ve been editing our podcasts for a year and all of a sudden the first podcasts of 2021 and I can’t get the music (mp3) files to load into audacity. I’ve tried reloading the Lame and FFMpeg libraries and nothing. HELP!!!
There was a change that makes Audacity more picky about imperfect MP3s… They fixed one problem but then it turned-out that there are lots of “invalid” (but still working) MP3s floating-around…
Until that’s “corrected” there is a [u]work-around using FFmpeg[/u].
Awesome!!! Many, many, thanks! I was going crazy!! 
Uh OH! Now I can’t upload MP4 files like I used to. I get a different error now. Is there another rule I need to make that work now?
“Upload”?
Do you mean “Import” into Audacity, or “Export” from Audacity, or something else?
What is the full and complete error message?
Sorry, normally I drag and drop my raw mp4 files into audacity. Now I get an error stating that it’s "an advanced audio coding file. Without the optional FFMpeg library, audacity can not open this type of file.
Look in “Edit menu > Preferences > Libraries”.
Which version of FFmpeg does it say you have?
Lame MP3 Export Library version: 3.1 (built-in)
Please try this:
- Exit Audacity
- Restart Audacity
- “Help menu > Diagnostics > Show Log”
- Copy and paste the contents of the log into your reply.
13:57:23: Audacity 2.4.2
13:57:23: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
13:57:23: mLibAVFormatPath (‘C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications\Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe’) is not empty. Loading from it.
13:57:23: Looking up PATH environment variable…
13:57:23: PATH = ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\windows\system32;C:\windows;C:\windows\System32\Wbem;C:\windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\windows\System32\OpenSSH;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Users\Signol\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;’
13:57:23: Checking that ‘C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications’ is in PATH…
13:57:23: Warning: FFmpeg directory ‘C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications’ is not in PATH.
13:57:23: Temporarily prepending ‘;C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications’ to PATH…
13:57:23: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications\Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe’.
13:57:23: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avutil_version’ in a dynamic library (error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.)
13:57:23: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avcodec_version’ in a dynamic library (error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.)
13:57:23: avformat not monolithic
13:57:23: Loading avutil from ‘avutil-52.dll’.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avutil-52.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Loading avcodec from ‘avcodec-55.dll’.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avcodec-55.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Loading avformat from ‘C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications\Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe’.
13:57:23: Returning PATH to previous setting…
13:57:23: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avutil_version’ in a dynamic library (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Actual avutil path
13:57:23: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avcodec_version’ in a dynamic library (error 87: The parameter is incorrect.)
13:57:23: Actual avcodec path
13:57:23: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avformat_version’ in a dynamic library (error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.)
13:57:23: Actual avformat path
13:57:23: Importing symbols…
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load symbol av_register_all
13:57:23: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is ‘avformat-55.dll’.
13:57:23: Looking up PATH environment variable…
13:57:23: PATH = ‘C:\Users\Signol\Documents\Applications;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\windows\system32;C:\windows;C:\windows\System32\Wbem;C:\windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\windows\System32\OpenSSH;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Users\Signol\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps’
13:57:23: Checking that ‘’ is in PATH…
13:57:23: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
13:57:23: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘avformat-55.dll’.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-55.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Loading avutil from ‘’.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Loading avcodec from ‘’.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Loading avformat from ‘avformat-55.dll’.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-55.dll’ (error 126: The specified module could not be found.)
13:57:23: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
13:57:23: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
You don’t have a compatible version of FFmpeg installed.
If you installed FFmpeg for an older version of Audacity, it may be too old for the current version of Audacity, in which case you can uninstall it (recommended before installing a newer version).
See here for how to install FFmpeg for Audacity: Installing and updating Audacity on Windows - Audacity Manual
Thanks, upon further examination, it seems I had the library pointed to the wrong file.
Now it shows FFmpeg Library Version F(55.33.100),U(52.66.100). Does that look right? It is working now for both MP4 and MP3 file imports. 
That looks better