Open Video Downloader Error: Postprocessing: ffmpeg not found

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Error Thrown:

ERROR: Postprocessing: ffmpeg not found. Please install or provide the path using --ffmpeg-location

Context: macOS Big Sur M1 Chip, using the open video downloader program GitHub release or Homebrew. This specifically was thrown at the end of downloading the video file and the audio file from a given URL. The two files remained separate as a result of the error, the video was playable normally, but audio was in a .webm format (unusable for most people).

Analysis: It is clear that a dependency is missing, or its path cannot be located. For macOS users like me, the first step after checking the app's preferences for a path set or dependency download function is to check for the given dependency in the system. Once checking using Homebrew, it became clear that several dependencies were missing.

youtube-dl runtime-error ffmpeg
2 Answers

Solution: Use a package manager like Homebrew to install the following in order of appearance below:

  1. YouTube-dl
  2. ffmpeg

For people that are new to Homebrew, you need to run these commands or your Terminal app:

brew install ffmpeg
brew install youtube-dl

If you are told that these packages exist then please update them using the upgrade command

brew upgrade youtube-dl
brew upgrade ffmpeg
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In addition, the app may be installed, but not in the user's PATH env variable. Open a terminal shell as the user, and type which ffmpeg . Make sure you get the expected answer.

Also note that Homebrew changed the location of ffmpeg. It used to be at /opt/homebrew/bin/ffmpeg but they moved it to /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg.

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