Using ffmpeg on PythonAnywhere
Question:
My (first) web app uses pydub, which depends on ffmpeg. On my local windows environment, I installed ffmpeg and added the path to the ffmpeg executables to the windows "path" environment variables.
It all works locally, but bow that I have deployed my app to PythonAnywhere, the following line in my code is causing an error:
sound.export(export_path, format="mp3", bitrate="128k")
I believe the error is because this code relies on ffmpeg.
I have read on their forums that ffmpeg is installed for all users on PythonAnywhere. Is there something I need to do to get it to work? Do I need to add the path of the ffmpeg files to the environment variables? I have a .env file with other env variables — would I need to add something to this?
Answers:
Got home and tried PythonAnywhere myself, and I don’t find any issue with it and its FFmpeg.
Without installing anything (no FFmpeg, no Python packages), I run successfully in REPL:
>>> os.system('ffmpeg')
[snipped ffmpeg banner]
>>> import pydub
>>> pydub.utils.get_encoder_name()
'ffmpeg'
>>> pydub.utils.get_prober_name()
'ffprobe'
>>> pydub.utils.get_supported_codecs()
[snipped a large list of FFmpeg codecs]
So, your issue is not ffmpeg/pydub. Post the exact error. Can it be that it doesn’t like you to save a file in the directory you specified?
The problem was not ffmpeg – which I have confirmed is installed for all users on PythonAnywhere. Instead, my issue was the export path I was using with pydub. I fixed my issue by changing:
export_path = "media/my_path"
to
export_path = "home/my_app/my_app/media/my_path"
which is then used in
sound.export(export_path, format="mp3", bitrate="128k")
My (first) web app uses pydub, which depends on ffmpeg. On my local windows environment, I installed ffmpeg and added the path to the ffmpeg executables to the windows "path" environment variables.
It all works locally, but bow that I have deployed my app to PythonAnywhere, the following line in my code is causing an error:
sound.export(export_path, format="mp3", bitrate="128k")
I believe the error is because this code relies on ffmpeg.
I have read on their forums that ffmpeg is installed for all users on PythonAnywhere. Is there something I need to do to get it to work? Do I need to add the path of the ffmpeg files to the environment variables? I have a .env file with other env variables — would I need to add something to this?
Got home and tried PythonAnywhere myself, and I don’t find any issue with it and its FFmpeg.
Without installing anything (no FFmpeg, no Python packages), I run successfully in REPL:
>>> os.system('ffmpeg')
[snipped ffmpeg banner]
>>> import pydub
>>> pydub.utils.get_encoder_name()
'ffmpeg'
>>> pydub.utils.get_prober_name()
'ffprobe'
>>> pydub.utils.get_supported_codecs()
[snipped a large list of FFmpeg codecs]
So, your issue is not ffmpeg/pydub. Post the exact error. Can it be that it doesn’t like you to save a file in the directory you specified?
The problem was not ffmpeg – which I have confirmed is installed for all users on PythonAnywhere. Instead, my issue was the export path I was using with pydub. I fixed my issue by changing:
export_path = "media/my_path"
to
export_path = "home/my_app/my_app/media/my_path"
which is then used in
sound.export(export_path, format="mp3", bitrate="128k")