FFmpeg hardcoding subtitles fontconfig error

Question

I was trying to run the command: ffmpeg -i vid1.mp4 -vf "ass=subtitle.ass" vidOut.mp4 on a virtual machine and ran into the error:

Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
No usable fontconfig configuration file found, using fallback.
Fontconfig error: cannot load default config file

ffmpeg then finished running through the command but the video it produced had no subtitles. I've tried adding a fonts.conf file, and setting FC_CONFIG_FILE= C:\ffmpeg\fonts.conf and FC_CONFIG_DIR= C:\ffmpeg\ but I still get the same error.

I ran the same code with the same ASS and mp4 files on my normal machine and the code worked fine. Any advice on my problem would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: I'm using the static build of FFmpeg version 3.3.3

Answer 1

As it turns out, specifying the path to ffmpeg directly when using the command fixed the problem. C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg -i vid1.mp4 -vf "ass=subtitle.ass" vidOut.mp4 works perfectly