This Video Has No Audio Track

You will see this when you ask for an audio-only output format from a source

that contains no audio stream:

> This video has no audio track, so it cannot be converted to mp3. Use a source

> that contains audio, or choose a video output format.

Converting to mp3, ogg or flac keeps the audio and drops the video. If there is

no audio to keep, the result would be an empty file, so we stop before spending

your minutes on it.

Check your source first

ffprobe -v error -show_entries stream=codec_type -of csv=p=0 input.mp4

Each line is one stream. A file with sound shows both:

video
audio

A silent file shows only video.

Screen recordings — many capture tools record system audio only if you

turn it on, so the saved file is silent.

Editor exports — muting a timeline, or exporting with a video-only

preset, drops the audio stream rather than exporting silence.

Stock and sample footage — a lot of stock clips ship without audio.

An earlier step removed it — if a previous job used -an, its output has

no audio for the next job to extract.

Confirm with the ffprobe command above before converting.

If you wanted a smaller file rather than the audio specifically, convert to mp4:

{
  "inputs": [{ "url": "https://example.com/input.mp4" }],
  "outputFormat": "mp4"
}

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -f lavfi -i anullsrc -shortest -c:v copy -c:a aac with-silence.mp4

If you supply your own options array we do not second-guess it, so the job runs

and FFmpeg reports the underlying problem instead:

> Output file does not contain any stream

That usually means the same thing. It can also mean a filter produced no output,

or that a -map selected a stream which does not exist.