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I want to extract audio from a video downloaded with youtube-dl on Windows. I got youtube-dl working, but am unable to extract the audio. This problem is caused due to not having the correct audio codes installed.

When I try to extract audio it tells me the following:

WARNING: unable to obtain file audio codes with ffprobe

The youtube-dl manual says:

-x -extract-audio    convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)

How do I install ffprobe or ffmpeg? Do I install this on Windows, or do I install this as a Python extension?

My OS is Windows 7.

the Tin Man
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FlyingNimbus
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4 Answers4

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ffmpeg is not a Python module. Take a look at the code of youtube-dl in the FFmpegExtractAudioPP class.

It uses this call to figure out if the executable exists or not. It checks in your current path:

subprocess.Popen([exe, '-version'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()

You'll need to download the Windows builds of ffmpeg and put them in your current path, probably making sure that they do not have .exe at the end of their names.

Fredrick Brennan
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  • Thanks for the response, would you be so kind to help me out a little more detailed, it would save me a lot of time. Which files do i need to download exactly and what do I do with them? Do I need to remove the exe? Do I need to change the python code? I have never written python before so i wouldn't know how :S – FlyingNimbus Jan 07 '13 at 22:20
  • @user1160265 I think your question is better suited to SuperUser if it isn't a programming question. – Fredrick Brennan Jan 08 '13 at 00:06
  • Thanks for this answer; it really helped me. I don't think having `.exe` as the extension of the ffmpeg binaries matters, though. I just extracted the ffmpeg build to `C:` and added its `bin` directory to my PATH, and ytdl worked fine. (I'd edit your answer, but I'm not confident enough to generalize to everybody) – Austin Adams May 25 '15 at 17:47
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A quick fix for Windows users:

  1. Download the ffmpeg package from http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/, unzip it, copy ALL the contents of the Bin directory to the directory where youtube-dl.exe is located.

  2. Using DOS navigate to the directory where youtube-dl is located and run using the command:

    youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3
the Tin Man
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Sunil Kumar
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  • Thanks! I've searched for this for quite a while. I've searched around the internet and some people say to put it inside a 'bin' folder in the installation folder or `FFmpeg/bin` or use the --FFmpeg-location. Nothing helped besides bluntly putting the executables in the youtubedl folder. – Curtwagner1984 Jun 20 '17 at 12:46
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    That site no longer exists – curtisp Oct 01 '20 at 02:26
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EDIT

Future users may want to download the latest build from ffmpeg.org

My rep doesn't allow me to add a comment so I will put in here.

As per Sep 18, 2020 http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ is closed, but still accessible via Web Archive. The complete downloads are still available from here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20200918193047/https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

I have made the following files/versions available for Windows users from my Google Drive but please don't take these as granted, and scan for malware or viruses as always:

ffmpeg-4.2.2-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.2.2-win64-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.2.3-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.2.3-win64-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3-win64-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3.1-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3.1-win64-static.zip

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oj3VndOC-bGhfpNcHW3otIR--V2wxdG-?usp=sharing

Once downloaded, I extracted the latest build (4.3.1) on Windows 10 and copied all the .exe (ffmpeg, ffplay, ffprobe) to the same directory as youtube-dl, and then run:

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
th.sigit
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0

You can easily get win-ffmpeg using chocolatey

and if you still can’t get youtube-dl and ffmpeg to work together,

maybe you can do it in two steps:

  1. Get mp4 or avi : youtube-dl url

  2. Extract audio

    ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -codec copy out.mp3

gary133
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