Discord music bot shows FFmpeg error and won't stream audio

[ethant]

I’m having trouble with my Discord bot that’s supposed to stream music. It’s built using discord.js and youtube-dl-core but when I try to run it, I get an FFmpeg error. Here’s my current setup:

const discord = require('discord.js');
const client = new discord.Client();
const youtubeDL = require('ytdl-core');

const BOT_TOKEN = 'YOUR_TOKEN_HERE';
const COMMAND_PREFIX = '!';
const botVersion = '2.0';
const guildData = {};

client.on('ready', () => {
    console.log('Music bot is running! Version: ' + botVersion);
});

client.on('message', msg => {
    let commands = msg.content.substring(COMMAND_PREFIX.length).split(' ');
    
    switch(commands[0]) {
        case 'start':
            
            function startPlayback(voiceConnection, msg) {
                var guildInfo = guildData[msg.guild.id];
                
                guildInfo.audioStream = voiceConnection.play(youtubeDL(guildInfo.playlist[0], {filter: 'audioonly'}));
                
                guildInfo.playlist.shift();
                
                guildInfo.audioStream.on('finish', function() {
                    if(guildInfo.playlist[0]) {
                        startPlayback(voiceConnection, msg);
                    } else {
                        voiceConnection.disconnect();
                    }
                });
            }
            
            if(!commands[1]) {
                msg.channel.send('Please provide a YouTube URL!');
                return;
            }
            
            if(!msg.member.voice.channel) {
                msg.channel.send('Join a voice channel first!');
                return;
            }
            
            if(!guildData[msg.guild.id]) guildData[msg.guild.id] = {
                playlist: []
            };
            
            var guildInfo = guildData[msg.guild.id];
            guildInfo.playlist.push(commands[1]);
            
            if(!msg.guild.voice) {
                msg.member.voice.channel.join().then(function(voiceConnection) {
                    startPlayback(voiceConnection, msg);
                });
            }
            
        break;
    }
});

client.login(BOT_TOKEN);

The error message I keep getting is:

FFmpeg/avconv not found! Error at Function.getInfo
UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: FFmpeg/avconv not found!

I think FFmpeg might not be installed properly on my system but I’m not sure how to fix this. Has anyone dealt with this issue before?

[bellagarcia]

yea so u gotta get ffmpeg installed manually. for windows, grab it from the official site n make sure it’s in ur PATH. if ur on linux, just do sudo apt install ffmpeg. restart ur terminal after and it should work!

[Pete_Magic]

That FFmpeg error is definitely what’s breaking your audio streaming. But installing FFmpeg alone won’t fix it - you should switch to @discordjs/voice and @discordjs/opus since your voice connection code looks outdated for newer discord.js versions. Make sure you’ve got the audio dependencies too: npm install node-opus or npm install opusscript. I had the same problem and even with FFmpeg installed, missing opus encoders still broke streaming. Run your bot with --trace-warnings to see exactly what’s failing in the audio pipeline.

[sofiag]

Had the exact same issue when setting up my first music bot. FFmpeg installation is your problem. I downloaded the static build from Download FFmpeg and extracted it to C:\ffmpeg on Windows. Add the bin folder to your system PATH. Open a new command prompt and run ffmpeg -version to check it’s working. Some hosting services like Heroku need FFmpeg as a buildpack instead of manual installation. Restart your IDE and terminal completely after installing - they cache PATH variables.