Why is npm install failing when trying to download and convert a YouTube video to mp3 using GPT4 and ffmpeg on Pipedream?

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1

This topic was automatically generated from Slack. You can find the original thread here.

I’m getting npm install failed as an error for this code, which is meant to download a YouTube video and convert it to an mp3.

I generated the code from GPT4 using ’s sample code from an earlier thread (though I think that was also generated by AI).

Has anyone successfully gotten ffmpeg to work on Pipedream?

2

Hi Thomas, could you share the specific error you’re seeing?

3

yep - that is the error actually:

Code Error
npm install failed

I’ve turned on support access for my test workflow: https://pipedream.com/@tomfrankly/test-youttube-to-mp3-p_ZJCo3zk/build

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Thanks. ffmpeg should work and that import is correct, it’s actually failing on import youtubedl from "youtube-dl";. Looking into the package, it’s likely trying to use a system dependency that we don’t have on our execution environment

5

look like they actually deprecated that package and point users to another: youtube-dl - npm

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unfortunately the new package install also fails, looking into why:

import youtubedl from 'youtube-dl-exec'
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it seems like that package requires python be installed, since it’s a wrapper around GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes . I think that’s part of the issue

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Do you have another workaround / technique for downloading YouTube videos?

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not that I know of, unless there’s another API that can do it. AFAIK, all of the YouTube-downloader apps use youtube-dl at their core

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Not a huge issue at the moment. I anticipated that people would ask how they could transcribe and summarize YouTube videos once I released my voice notes-to-Notion workflow

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Are you comfortable running this in a Python / Bash code step?

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I’ve never written in Python, but I’m always down to learn and I have plenty of “treat me like a kindergardner” ChatGPT prompts at the ready :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Are there any potential issues with that, beyond me being unfamiliar with Python?

I’m turning this into a tutorial, so anything I do would be something that a large number of people might also do

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The only hesitation I have in recommending Python is that it’s still in beta, and there are a few bugs we’re working to address.

do you know the best way to download YouTube videos in a workflow? e.g. could we build a pre-built Node action for this?

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This would have been a nice use case for a custom container, and install the youtube-dl binary on.

I’m not aware of any other Node.js library that will download YouTube videos, nor of a 3rd party service that will act as a proxy.

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Do you know what youtube-dl does that we can’t do via straight HTTP?

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I know it’s a complex lib, just trying to see if it’s something we can hack for this specific use case

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It might perform some request massaging with user-agents, etc. I’m not sure:

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If it’s not feasible, no worries for now! I think people will still be very happy being able to transcribe and summarize voice notes and podcast episodes

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Posted thread to Discourse: Why is npm install failing for YouTube video-to-mp3 conversion code on Pipedream?