diff --git a/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.nemo-skills b/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.nemo-skills
index 6300512339..ba40a21f5c 100644
--- a/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.nemo-skills
+++ b/dockerfiles/Dockerfile.nemo-skills
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@ RUN apt-get update && \
     curl \
     wget \
     git \
-    git-lfs && \
+    git-lfs \
+    ffmpeg && \
     ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python && \
     rm -rf /var/cache/apt/archives /var/lib/apt/lists/*
 
diff --git a/requirements/audio.txt b/requirements/audio.txt
index 6cabfccf93..f68d3d9844 100644
--- a/requirements/audio.txt
+++ b/requirements/audio.txt
@@ -2,3 +2,8 @@ jiwer>=3.1.0,<4.0.0                   # Word/Character Error Rate computation
 sacrebleu               # BLEU score computation
 soundfile             # Audio file I/O for dataset preparation
 whisper-normalizer      # Lightweight text normalization (EnglishTextNormalizer)
+# torchcodec requires FFmpeg shared libraries (not installable via pip).
+# Install via system package manager before running pip install:
+#   Linux: sudo apt install ffmpeg
+#   macOS: brew install ffmpeg
+torchcodec