DLL load failed error when importing cv2

Question

I have installed opencv on my windows machine using python 3 6 without any issues  using   pip install opencv-python   but when I try to import cv2 I get the following error  ImportError  DLL load failed  The specified module could not be found    I have seen this post  It says cv2 doesn t work with python 3 I was wondering if this has been fixed or if there is a way around it

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I took a lot of time to solve this error   Run command  pip install opencv-contrib-python

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After spending too much time on this issue and trying out all different answers  here is what found    The accepted answer by  thewaywewere is no longer applicable  I think this was applicable when opencv-python module still wasn t available   This is indeed a bug in Anaconda 4 2 because they forgot to ship python3 dll  They have fixed this in next releases but unfortunately 4 2 is the last release with Python 3 5 as default  If you are stuck with Python 3 5  for example VS2015 is only aware of versions up to 3 5  then you must manually download python3 dll as described in answer by  Ramesh-X  If you can move on to Python 3 6  which at present bit difficult if you are using OpenCV and VS2015  then just install latest Anaconda version and you don t have to deal with any of these

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I ran into this problem on Windows 10  N  with a new Anaconda installation based on Python 3 7  OpenCV version 4 0   None of the above advice helped  such as installing OpenCV from the unofficial site nor installing VC Redistributable    I checked DLL dependencies of     AppData Local conda conda envs foo Lib site-packages cv2 cv2 cp37-win amd64 pyd using dumpbin exe according to this github issue  I noticed a library MF dll  which I figured out belongs to Windows Media Foundation   So I installed Media Feature Pack for N versions of Windows 10 and voil    the issue was resolved

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If you are using Anaconda with python 3 5  this is a problem in the Anaconda release   Refer this issue   You can fix this issue by copying python3 dll file to Anaconda3 folder  where python exe is located   How to get  python3 dll     In cmd  type python --version to find whether your installation is 64-bit or 32-bit download python 3 x embeddable zip file from here Extract the zip file and copy python3 dll file to Anaconda3 folder   But if you can move to Anaconda with python 3 6 you will not face this issue  If it is possible for you  then it is the recommended way

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I had the same problem and spent 3 full days wrestling with it  I tried everything suggested  upgrading pip  updating Visual C    updating Anaconda  manually downloading files and basically every solution I could find on the web  Here s what finally worked maybe it ll help someone else   1- I ditched Python 3 and Anaconda-based downloads since I noticed they had several problems and downloaded Python 2 7 16 64-bits instead   2- Navigated to where Pip was located on my drive  for me the path is C  Python27 Scripts  highlighted the path by selecting it  and typed  cmd  then enter so the Command Prompt opens on that path  I noticed skipping this usually brings about a couple errors   3- Updated Pip using python -m pip install --upgrade pip on the CMD  again  skipping this and not updating it didn t let this procedure go through   4- Downloaded the appropriate Wheel file from https   www lfd uci edu  gohlke pythonlibs  opencv  after trying several the one that worked for me was opencv python-2 4 13 7-cp27-cp27m-win amd64 whl  I copy-pasted it to the same folder Pip was in  C  Python27 Scripts for me  and then installed it through CMD using  pip install opencv python-2 4 13 7-cp27-cp27m-win amd64 whl  Always through CMD opened on that path as showed in step 2  5- After step 4 when I imported OpenCV using import cv2 I didn t have the DLL error anymore but an error related to numpy  since I had just installed that version of Python and so Numpy wasn t installed yet   I installed numpy by typing pip install numpy and voil     The problem was solved and OpenCV imported correctly   Hope this helps someone

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This error can be caused by missing the following dll  To have this dll install  https   www microsoft com en-us software-download mediafeaturepack as already explained above

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Install python using    pip install opencv-python It will take the latest version    Make sure opencv-python is installed in path  Python Python36 Lib site-packages   you will find cv2 folder over there   To check the version of cv2  import cv2 print cv2   version

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If this helps someone  on official python 3 6 windows docker image  to make this thing work I had to copy following libraries from my desktop   C  windows system32  aepic dll avicap32 dll avifil32 dll avrt dll Chakra dll CompPkgSup dll CoreUIComponents dll cryptngc dll dcomp dll devmgr dll dmenterprisediagnostics dll dsreg dll edgeIso dll edpauditapi dll edputil dll efsadu dll efswrt dll ELSCore dll evr dll ieframe dll ksuser dll mf dll mfasfsrcsnk dll mfcore dll mfnetcore dll mfnetsrc dll mfplat dll mfreadwrite dll mftranscode dll msacm32 dll msacm32 drv msvfw32 dll ngcrecovery dll oledlg dll policymanager dll RTWorkQ dll shdocvw dll webauthn dll WpAXHolder dll wuceffects dll   C  windows SysWOW64  aepic dll avicap32 dll avifil32 dll avrt dll Chakra dll CompPkgSup dll CoreUIComponents dll cryptngc dll dcomp dll devmgr dll dsreg dll edgeIso dll edpauditapi dll edputil dll efsadu dll efswrt dll ELSCore dll evr dll ieframe dll ksuser dll mfasfsrcsnk dll mfcore dll mfnetcore dll mfnetsrc dll mfplat dll mfreadwrite dll mftranscode dll msacm32 dll msvfw32 dll oledlg dll policymanager dll RTWorkQ dll shdocvw dll webauthn dll wuceffects dll

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You can download the latest OpenCV 3 2 0 for Python 3 6 on Windows 32-bit or 64-bit machine  look for file starts withopencv python-3 2 0-cp36-cp36m   from this unofficial site  Then type below command to install it    pip install opencv python-3 2 0-cp36-cp36m-win32 whl  32-bit version  pip install opencv python-3 2 0-cp36-cp36m-win amd64 whl  64-bit version    I think it would be easier   Update on 2017-09-15   OpenCV 3 3 0 wheel files are now available in the unofficial site and replaced OpenCV 3 2 0   Update on 2018-02-15   OpenCV 3 4 0 wheel files are now available in the unofficial site and replaced OpenCV 3 3 0   Update on 2018-06-19   OpenCV 3 4 1 wheel files are now available in the unofficial site with CPython 3 5 3 6 3 7 support  and replaced OpenCV 3 4 0   Update on 2018-10-03   OpenCV 3 4 3 wheel files are now available in the unofficial site with CPython 3 5 3 6 3 7 support  and replaced OpenCV 3 4 1   Update on 2019-01-30   OpenCV 4 0 1 wheel files are now available in the unofficial site with CPython 3 5 3 6 3 7 support   Update on 2019-06-10   OpenCV 3 4 6 and OpenCV 4 1 0 wheel files are now available in the unofficial site with CPython 3 5 3 6 3 7 support

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There are many questions on that and many suggestions  None of them helped me for the recent Opencv 3 4 16 and Python 3 6 3 7   Finally I switched to Pyhon 2 7 15 and installed opencv 3 1 0  The DLL-problem was solved   When I look in cv2 pyd with dependency walker  the 3 1 has no dependency to one missing dll  Opencv 3 4 has this missing dependency to this dll   API-MS-WIN-DOWNLEVEL-SHLWAPI-L1-1-0 DLL   may be this is the problem   P S   I have Win7 pofessional 64Bit  32Bit Python 2 7 15

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Frankly there are a lot of very smart and complicated answers here  Mine is dumb and simple  I deleted my conda environment  re-installed from scratch  taking pains to install opencv first  This fixed my problems  Environments are meant to be temporary and diaphanous -- don t get too attached    So if my environment was called fubar first make sure every instance is deactivated  including any IDEs that are using it   Then remove it   conda remove --name fubar --all   Now I simply recreate my environment and add opencv first   conda create --name fubar conda activate fubar conda install opencv   And then go from there  First open python and make sure import cv2 works  Then you should be on your way  Note I always  always  install Spyder last as it tends to screw things up when I don t   Note  if that doesn t work  we have had some cases where people have to uninstall and reinstall Anaconda  and then things worked  Obviously a last resort

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I had the same issue when installing opencv 2 4 13 on Anaconda3  Python 3 6     I managed to fix this issue by reverting to Anaconda2  Python 2 7

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In my case  I had to install an older version of openCV  windows 10  Python 3 6 8   pip install opencv-python  3 3 0 9

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The issue is due to the missing python3 dll file in Anaconda3    To fix the issue  you should simply copy the python3 dll to C  Program Files Anaconda3  or wherever your Anaconda3 is installed    You can get the python3 dll by downloading the binaries provided at the bottom of the Python s Release page and extracting the python3 dll from the ZIP file

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In my case a major update of Windows 10 removed some Windows packages  so other methods  reinstalling opencv etc   did not help  To fix it  install   a  Microsoft Visual C   Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015  2017 and 2019  b  Media Feature Pack for N versions - needed only if you have Windows 10 N  Both need restart of PC

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Please Remember if you want to install python package libraries for windows  you should always consider Python unofficial Binaries Step 1  Search for your package  download dependent version 2 7 or 3 6 you can find it under Downloads your package version whl its called python wheel Step 2  Now install using pip  pip install   Downloads your packae ver whl  this will install without any error

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I had the same issue with python 3 6 Anaconda3  and OpenCV 3 4 1 for spyder to work  Even after copying cv2 pyd into Anaconda3 Users home Anaconda3 Lib site-packages  it didn t work    But found a solution  Later I installed OpenCV and Dlib on Anaconda and copied the generated cv2 cp36-win amd64 pyd and dlib cp36-win amd64 pyd into Anaconda3 Users home Anaconda3 Lib site-packages  These can be copied from environment folder C  Users home Anaconda3 envs opencv Lib site-packages    Finally spyder started to work

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I have the same problem  when I install WinPython programming  and run opencv after copy the cv2 pyd file from my opencv directory  it will be like this  C  Users      Downloads opencv build python 2 7 x64  x64 or x86 is depend on your 32 or 64 bit devices  and paste to C  Users      Downloads WinPython-64bit-3 5 4 1Qt5 python-3 5 4 amd64 Lib site-packages  I prefer the previous python 3 5 than 3 6  Because when I  import cv2  installed  python 3 6  it shows directly   ImportError  DLL load failed  The specified module could not be found  Then I install python 3 5 and open WinPyhton Command prompt and type  pip install opencv-python    The command prompt download opencv automatically  it shows the process like this  Successfully installed opencv-python-3 3 0 10   Finally  I try to run open cv by type  import cv2   it works i try to type  cv2 version   and shows   3 3 0

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base  C  WINDOWS system32 conda install C  Users Todd Downloads opencv3-3 1 0-py35 0 tar bz2  I ran this command from anaconda terminal after I downloaded the version from  https   anaconda org menpo opencv3 files  This is the only way I could get cv2 to work and I tried everything for two days

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this happens because the compiler or the interpreter is finding more than one package of the file  delete all the number of same package you have and then keep only one and then try to install  It serves

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Recently I have faced the similar issue in Azure Windows Server 2012 r2   Tried all option with and without Anaconda but none of them helped  After lot of findings I found that mfplat dll was missing which is related to Window Media Service   Hence you have to manually install the features so that you can get dll related to window media service   1 Turn windows features on or off  2 Skip the roles screen and directly go to Feature screen  3 Select  Desktop Experience  under  User Interfaces and Infrastructure   After this all required dll of media services for opencv would be available    So if you are planning to run your code in cloud Window Server  then please dont forget to select Desktop Experience feature

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Under Winpython   the Winpython-64bit-    python     DLLs directory the file cv2 pyd should be renamed to  cv2 pyd

[python] DLL load failed error when importing cv2

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