ffprobe or avprobe not found. Please install one

Question

I want to add tags to mp3 converted by youtube-dl & ffmpeg:

youtube-dl -o '/Output/qpgTC9MDx1o.mp3' qpgTC9MDx1o -f bestaudio --extract-audio --metadata-from-title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" 2>&1

I have this error in the output result:

[youtube] qpgTC9MDx1o: Downloading webpage [youtube] qpgTC9MDx1o: Extracting video information [youtube] qpgTC9MDx1o: Downloading js player en_US-vfluGO3jj [youtube] qpgTC9MDx1o: Downloading DASH manifest [download] /var/www/vhosts/mp3-y.com/httpdocs/Mp3_Output/quick-mp3.com-JALAL-EL-HAMDAOUI-2007-ARRASSIATES-VOL2-F1P-9CDoxlQ.mp3 has already been downloaded [download] 100% of 13.43MiB WARNING: qpgTC9MDx1o: writing DASH m4a. Only some players support this container. Install ffmpeg or avconv to fix this automatically. [fromtitle] parsed artist: Maroon 5 [fromtitle] parsed title: Animals ERROR: ffprobe or avprobe not found. Please install one.

Prelude

how i verify if ffprobe installed in centos ? and if not how i can make install ? – Prelude

That's a rather different question, and one that is probably better asked on either Unix & Linux or Super User, since I'm pretty sure ffprobe is not a programmer-exclusive tool. – Genuflection

Maybe ask the authors of youtube-dl or post on their GitHub project page? – Peep

I came here because I get the error when I download a video with youtube-dl and want to convert it to mp3: options={..'preferredcodec': 'mp3'..} – Sharpwitted

Answer 1

Make sure you have the latest version for youtube-dl:
sudo youtube-dl -U

After that you can solve this problem by installing the missing ffmpeg.

Ubuntu and debian:
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

macOS:
brew install ffmpeg

Windows:
choco install ffmpeg

Aubine

On MacOS you should use brew upgrade youtube-dl to make sure you have latest version of youtube-dl – Diplodocus

On windows its choco install ffmpeg – Hhd

I thought brew take care of dependencies itself. So why is ffmpeg not installed in the first place? – Overlarge

@Overlarge probably because ffmpeg isn't needed for youtube-dl basic use cases. For example, only if you use the -x option to convert the video to audio, but not just to download the video with no -x flag. – Haplography

brew reinstall ffmpeg works for me – Ratiocination

youtube-dl is not updated anymore since last release december 2021. – Sharpwitted

ffmpeg is huge, is there another option if I want to convert from video to mp3? – Sharpwitted

Answer 2

brew install ffmpeg will install what you need and all the dependencies if you are on a Mac.

Perceivable

windows alternative? – Intentional

@Intentional see my answer https://mcmap.net/q/136226/-ffprobe-or-avprobe-not-found-please-install-one for Windows solution. – Regicide

Answer 3

I know the user asked this for Linux, but I had this issue in Windows (10 64bits) and found little information, so this is how I solved it:

• Download LIBAV, I used libav-11.3-win64.7z. Just copy "avprobe.exe" and all DLLs from "/win64/usr/bin" to where "youtube-dl.exe" is.

In case LIBAV does not help, try with FFMPEG, copying the contents of the "bin" folder to where "youtube-dl.exe" is. That did not help me, but others said it did, so it may worth a try.

Hope this helps someone having the issue in Windows.

Mar

Thanks. This helped me. A small correction to this. You should copy the contents of the bin folder to where youtube-dl.exe is. – Rematch

I had success by just copying the extracted contents of LIBAV to the Program Files folder and added the path to "C:\Program Files\libav-11.3-win64\win64\usr\bin" as an environment variable to the System Path group. – Gosplan

This is what Windows users need to do. I went for the FFMPEG instructions, but the link is no longer working, so I used this instead. – Johnathan

both URLs are dead – Surinam

@FelixJassler did you try Google for new links??? The answer is 7 years old... – Mar

@FedericoAlvarez I wanted to edit your answer with updated links, but SO doesn't let me :/ – Surinam

Googling as @FelixJassler suggested yields ffmpeg.org/download.html . For windows gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-release-essentials.zip worked for me. Just moved files under bin directory --namely ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe, ffprobe.exe-- into ~/.bin after creating the directory and adding to PATH of course. – Chemistry

I had the files of ffmpeg in a subfolder of the the one containing the youtube-dl.exe in windows. Moving the files from ffmpeg folder directly into the folder where youtube-dl.exe is, solved the problem for me (since there is no config, that would tell the .exe where to find the path to ffmpeg) – Ollayos

Answer 4

On Windows, you can easily install ffmpeg via chocolatey

choco install ffmpeg

Criminality

Why did you downvote this one? I have installed chocolatey then install ffmpeg with choco on Windows command window. After successfully installed ffmpeg - I am able to convert it to mp3 – Missend

Thank you so much! – Sonasonant

Thanks buddy. Choco has really made windows very developer friendly – Sclerosed

Answer 5

There is some confusion when using pip install in Windows. The instructions talk about a specific folder which has youtube-dl.exe. There is no such folder if you use pip install.

The solution is to:

• Download one of the builds from https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/
• Extract the zip contents
• Place the contents of the bin folder (there are three exe files) in any folder which is a path in Windows. I personally use Ananconda, so I placed them in /Anaconda/Scripts, but you could place it in any folder and add that folder to the path.

Kirchhoff

Answer 6

Compiling the last answers into one:

If you're on Windows, use chocolatey:

choco install ffmpeg

If you are on Mac, use Brew:

brew install ffmpeg

If you are on a Debian Linux distribution, use apt:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

And make sure Youtube-dl is updated:

youtube-dl -U

Mulvihill

Answer 7

What worked for me (youtube-dl version 2018.03.03, ffprobe 0.5, no avprobe, 3.4.1-tessus, in Hi-Sierra/iMac) was:

brew install libav

(thanks to marciovsena's post on GitHub).

I saw elsewhere that libav might be deprecated in the future, but I'll worry about it when we get there.

Ravens

That will install avprobe from the Libav fork. brew install ffmpeg should install ffprobe from FFmpeg. I guess either will work with youtube-dl, but FFmpeg is much more active organization than Libav. – Kayser

Answer 8

You can install them by

sudo apt-get install -y libav-tools

Ridden

If you're referring to Ubuntu, then as of 15.10 libav-tools is a virtual/transitional package and points to ffmpeg package, so there is no need to use it instead of ffmpeg. – Kayser

Answer 9

• Update your version of youtube-dl to the lastest as older version might not support.

   pip install --upgrade youtube_dl
  

• Install 'ffmpeg' and 'ffprobe' module

   pip install ffmpeg
   pip install ffprobe
  

• If you face the same issue, then download ffmpeg builds and put all the .exe files to Script folder($path: "Python\Python38-32\Scripts") (Windows OS only)

Gudrun

link is failing – Intentional

Answer 10

This is so simple if on windows...

In the folder where you have youtube-dl.exe

goto https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/

download the ffmpeg-git-full.7z file the download link is https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-git-full.7z

Open that zip file and move the ffmpeg.exe file to the same folder where youtube-dl.exe is

Example "blahblah.7z / whatevertherootfolderis / bin / ffmpeg.exe"

youtube-dl.exe -x --audio-format mp3 -o %(title)s.%(ext)s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyPKRcBTsFQ

Kirbie

I downloaded 64 bit version and my dinosaur PC couldn't handle it, hence after downloading 32 bit version, worked as a charm. – Baku

Well if you have a 32-bit (or x86) operating system, then it naturally it can't handle 64 bit software. It has nothing to do with it being a dinosaur, it's a compatibility issue. – Antenatal

Answer 11

on MAC i tried to run brew install ffmpeg but it didn't work and got many errors, so i did this and it worked:

1- make sure you have the latest version of youtube-dl

pip install --upgrade youtube_dl

2- go to https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/ and download ffmpeg and ffprobe

3- run which youtube-dl on Terminal to get the path, where youtube-dl is installed.

you should get something like this : /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/bin/

4- copy the 2 file you downloaded ffmpeg and ffprobe to the bin folder of your path from step 3.

that's it. you shouldn't get this error again.

Ulcer

Answer 12

For Windows, do this.

Go to https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases and download Windows file.

Extract to C:\Program Files and extract your zipped file.

Then go to System Properties and add C:\Program Files\ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl\bin to SYSTEM variables PATH

Regicide

Answer 13

On a Mac, install ffmpeg by downloading it from:

https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

Under "Get packages & executable files/Static Builds for macOS 64-bit".

I downloaded ffmpeg and ffprobe.

After download, I extracted the binaries ffmpeg and ffprobe, copied them to my path and set permissions:

cp ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/
cp ffprobe /usr/local/bin/
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/ff*

With brew install ffmpeg on macOS 10.13 I got the following Error: ffmpeg: no bottle available! and I was also not able to build ffmpeg on my machine.

Sholem

Answer 14

Posting what i found recently, just so that it might be of help.

Once you have installed ffmpeg as stated by various answers here , use the below option to point to the location of ffmpeg .

in my case i've installed ffmpg in (on Windows PC) E:\ffmpeg\bin

Use underscore rather than hyphen, while invoking youtube-dl from Python, and use --ffmpeg-location if calling from command line eg

ydl_opts = {       
            'ffmpeg_location' : 'E:\\ffmpeg\\bin\\ffmpeg.exe',
            } 

Gwenn

Answer 15

You can follow these steps (for mac):

rm -rf /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp* or for youtube-dl: rm -rf /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl*

then run;

brew install yt-dlp

you'll get a symlink error which you can resolve by running:

brew link --overwrite yt-dlp

It should work now!!

Breastplate

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Stack Overflow community. This question already has quite a few answers—including one that has been extensively validated by the community. Are you certain your approach hasn’t been given previously? If so, it would be useful to explain how your approach is different, under what circumstances your approach might be preferred, and/or why you think the previous answers aren’t sufficient. Can you kindly edit your answer to offer an explanation? – Asperse

Answer 16

1. update your version of youtube-dl to the lastest as older version might not support palylists.

   sudo youtube-dl -U if u installed via .deb

   sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl via pip

2. use this to download the playlist as an MP3 file

   youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 #url_to_playlist

Bromide

this does not address the question . – Empyreal

Answer 17

This is an old question. But if you're using a virtualenv with python, place the contents of the downloaded libav bin folder in the Scriptsfolder of your virtualenv.

Dockery