Could not determine executable to run

If you receive the following error:

npm ERR! could not determine executable to run

It could be for multiple reasons.

Binary not installed

NPM binaries can have different names than the NPM package.

If you run npx remotion, and don't have @remotion/cli installed, it will fail because the remotion binary is supplied by the @remotion/cli package.
Check if you have the correct package installed.

Corepack issue

It may be because you are using the npx command but the project is configured to use a different package manager.

If Corepack is enabled, the packageManager property in package.json matters:

{
  "packageManager": "[email protected]"
}

If the package manager is set to something else than npm, then the npx command may give this error message.

Resolution

Use the correct command runner for your project:

• If the package manager is set to pnpm, use pnpm exec instead of npx.
• If the package manager is set to yarn, use yarn instead of npx.
• If the package manager is set to bun, use bunx instead of npx.