deezer/spleeter · error · SpleeterError

No stream was found with ffprobe

Error message

No stream was found with ffprobe

What it means

After a successful ffprobe, `load()` requires the probe result to contain at least one stream. If the `streams` key is absent or empty, spleeter raises this `SpleeterError`. This typically means the file is not a media container ffprobe can find streams in.

Source

Thrown at spleeter/audio/ffmpeg.py:109

        Raises:
            SpleeterError:
                If any error occurs while loading audio.
        """
        if isinstance(path, Path):
            path = str(path)
        if not isinstance(path, str):
            path = path.decode()
        try:
            probe = ffmpeg.probe(path)
        except ffmpeg._run.Error as e:
            raise SpleeterError(
                "An error occurs with ffprobe (see ffprobe output below)\n\n{}".format(
                    e.stderr.decode()
                )
            )
        if "streams" not in probe or len(probe["streams"]) == 0:
            raise SpleeterError("No stream was found with ffprobe")
        metadata = next(
            stream for stream in probe["streams"] if stream["codec_type"] == "audio"
        )
        n_channels = metadata["channels"]
        if sample_rate is None:
            sample_rate = metadata["sample_rate"]
        output_kwargs = {"format": "f32le", "ar": sample_rate}
        if duration is not None:
            output_kwargs["t"] = str(dt.timedelta(seconds=duration))
        if offset is not None:
            output_kwargs["ss"] = str(dt.timedelta(seconds=offset))
        process = (
            ffmpeg.input(path)
            .output("pipe:", **output_kwargs)
            .run_async(pipe_stdout=True, pipe_stderr=True)
        )
        buffer, _ = process.communicate()
        waveform = np.frombuffer(buffer, dtype="<f4").reshape(-1, n_channels)

View on GitHub (pinned to c8854001ac)

Solutions

1. Verify the file is a real media file: `ffprobe <path>` and confirm it reports streams
2. Re-obtain or re-download the file; delete and regenerate zero-byte/corrupt files
3. If the file should have audio, re-encode it with ffmpeg: `ffmpeg -i in.wav out.wav`

Example fix

# before
audio, sr = adapter.load('empty.mp3')  # 0-byte file
// after
import os
if os.path.getsize('empty.mp3') == 0:
    raise ValueError('empty.mp3 is not a valid audio file')
audio, sr = adapter.load('empty.mp3')

import os, json, subprocess
def has_streams(path) -> bool:
    if not os.path.isfile(path) or os.path.getsize(path) == 0:
        return False
    r = subprocess.run(['ffprobe', '-print_format', 'json', '-show_streams', str(path)], capture_output=True)
    try:
        return len(json.loads(r.stdout).get('streams', [])) > 0
    except json.JSONDecodeError:
        return False

try:
    audio, rate = adapter.load(path)
except Exception as e:
    if 'No stream was found with ffprobe' in str(e):
        logger.warning('Skipping %s: no media streams', path)
        audio = None
    else:
        raise

When it happens

Trigger: Calling `adapter.load(path)` on a file that ffprobe can parse but which contains zero streams — e.g. an empty/corrupt container, a text file renamed to .mp3, or a video file with no streams.

Common situations: Empty placeholder files, interrupted downloads producing 0-byte or header-only files, feeding non-audio data files to the separator.

Related errors

• An error occurs with ffprobe (see ffprobe output below) {}
• {} binary not found
• FFMPEG error: {process.stderr.read()}

AI-assisted analysis of deezer/spleeter@c8854001ac (2026-08-28). Data as JSON: /api/errors/baff62052afd7e65. Report an issue: GitHub.