Updated to 12.0 about ring HOT 21 CLOSED

Is ffmpeg in the system PATH environment under which Homebridge is run? You can try setting "ffmpegPath" config option explicitly.

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I suggest trying to add the ffmpegPath option to the Ring Homebridge config.

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It really shouldn't be required, but I'm guessing some weird side effect running on Windows. It should be as simple as adding something like this just before the "platform": "Ring" (just tested and it let me add it):

"ffmpegPath": "C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe",

I've not personally tested this plugin code on native Windows (the author potentially has but I have not) so I'm guessing a little bit, but as Windows as some unique path handling in node, I wonder if there's something wrong here.

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And this only started with version 12.0.0 after Dusty made improvements to the audio.

What is confusing about that is that there were no changes in the way ffmpeg is referenced and the audio improvements were just the addition of a handful of additional flags to the existing ffmpeg options which produce a more consistent audio stream. There were no other changes (I know, I submitted the PR for the audio improvements).

It almost seems like your ffmpeg-for-homebridge package failed to install the binary, as that is the one that should be used. I don't understand why it is not being found.

Did you change anything else? Perhaps upgrade Node at the same time? I see you are on a pretty old version, perhaps try updating to the latest LTS version which is v18.17.1.

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Try this adding this to the config and restarting:

"ffmpegPath": "ffmpeg",

That should force it to search the system path. Just a shot.

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So I just went through the process of installing Homebridge on a Windows system, installed the Ring plugin, connected to Ring account, added to Home app, view a camera, worked perfectly. Found ffmpeg from the ffmpeg-for-homebridge package, no problem. Unfortunately, I don't know any other things to suggest. I'm using Node v18.17.1, but that's about the only difference I can think of. Followed the instructions at https://github.com/homebridge/homebridge/wiki/Install-Homebridge-on-Windows-10 which I assume are the same steps you used.

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Definitely 64-bit node, filename is node-v18.17.1-x64.msi. I don't do anything with 32-bit code anymore, and haven't for years on x86 platforms.

The code that is generating the message is super basic and largely unchanged going back years, so it's hard for me to even theorize what could be going wrong. Basically there's a single call to a function which is part of the @homebridge/camera-utils package, specifically, doesFfmpegSupportCodec('libfdk_aac', getFfmpegPath()). The primary goal of this call is to determine if the ffmpeg binary has libfdk_aac included, but a secondary result is if ffmpeg is not found at all.

Unless the ffmpegPath option has been manually set, as we tried above, the getFfmpegPath() call will return undefined and so camera-utils will use the path returned from importing ffmpegForHomebridgePath from the ffmpeg-for-homebridge package.

Is there definitely an ffmpeg.exe in you path in the ffmpeg-for-homebridge package? Should be in a path similar to:

C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\homebridge-ring\node_modules\ffmpeg-for-homebridge

And, if there is one in this path, what happens when you run ffmpeg.exe -version or ffmpeg.exe -codecs?

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So that version of ffmpeg probably doesn't help much since it doesn't have libfdk_aac, the output from that version of ffmpeg:
DEAIL. aac AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) (decoders: aac aac_fixed) (encoders: aac aac_mf)

Output of codecs from ffmpeg-for-homebridge:
DEAIL. aac AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) (decoders: aac aac_fixed libfdk_aac ) (encoders: aac libfdk_aac aac_mf )

I'd probably uninstall that ffmpeg version and focus on getting the ffmpeg-for-homebridge working as that is the recommended setup and should definitely work. Is there definitely an ffmpeg.exe in the homebridge-ring/node_modules/ffmeg-for-homebridge directory?

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definitely

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C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\homebridge-ring\node_modules\ffmpeg-for-homebridge.build\ffmpeg.exe

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Its located in:
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\homebridge-ring\node_modules\ffmpeg-for-homebridge.build\ffmpeg.exe

so I removed the ffmpeg path from the JSON config. Updated the node.js to the same 18.17.1.
still get the error.

I notice my ffmpeg.exe is in a folder called .build. Is that correct?

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And that fixed it. i moved the ffmpeg.exe into the ffmpeg-for-homebridge foler, out of the .build folder and that fixed it. Your help was invaluable!!!!

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Interesting, so for some reason the install of ffmpeg-for-homebridge failed. The ffmpeg-for-homebridge package is basically just a small javascript file which downloads the correct pre-compiled binary for your platform. Immediately after installing the package this script is run and it creates the ffmpeg-for-homebridge.build folder to download the release binary into, then it should copy it to the ffmpeg-for-homebridge directory and delete the temporary directory. Obviously those last two steps didn't happen in your case. Very strange, but glad you got it working.

I'll go ahead a close this.

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