How to extract the audio from a video as MP3
A lecture you want to listen to on a walk, a song from a concert clip, an interview for transcription, a voice memo that your phone saved as a video: often the sound is the part worth keeping. Extracting it gives a file a fraction of the size that plays in any music app. This guide shows how to do it with Audio Converter, which accepts videos directly, and how to choose a format and quality that suits what you will do with the result.
Extracting the sound, step by step
- Open Audio Converter and add one or more videos: MP4, M4V, MOV, MKV and WebM are accepted, up to 500 MB each and 1 GB in total, with up to 20 files at once. Audio files can go in the same batch.
- Choose the output format. MP3 is selected by default and plays everywhere.
- Optionally open Audio quality to choose the bitrate for MP3 or M4A: 128, 192 (the default), 256 or 320 kbps.
- Click Convert audio. Each row gets its own player, so you can listen before you download one file or a ZIP of all of them.
The picture is ignored and only the sound track is decoded and re-encoded. Because the tool reads the file as a stream instead of loading the whole video into memory, long recordings work on ordinary laptops. Nothing is uploaded: the video is read by your browser, on your device.
MP3, M4A, WAV or FLAC?
- MP3 is the safe choice for listening, sharing and podcast players. Speech sounds clean at 128 kbps; 192 kbps suits music.
- M4A (AAC) is what most phone videos already carry, and it is slightly more efficient than MP3 at the same bitrate. Choose it for Apple Music, iPhone or when size matters.
- WAV is uncompressed. Choose it when the audio goes into an editor or a transcription service that asks for it; expect roughly 10 MB per minute for stereo.
- FLAC keeps the same sound as WAV in about half the space, for archiving.
A video's sound is almost always compressed already, usually as AAC. Converting it to WAV or FLAC preserves exactly what was decoded but cannot bring back detail the camera's encoder discarded, and a higher MP3 bitrate than the source had makes the file bigger without making it better. For a typical phone video, MP3 at 192 kbps or M4A is indistinguishable from the original sound track.
Keeping only part of it
If you only need a section — one song from a set, a single answer from an interview — convert the whole video first, then send the result to Audio Trimmer with the Send to button. There you can select the part on a waveform, cut out a stretch in the middle, add fades and even out a quiet recording before saving. Trimming after conversion is faster than trimming the video, because the audio file is small and decodes in seconds.
To shorten the video itself instead, use Trim Video; to remove the sound from a video and keep the picture, use Mute Video.
When a video will not convert
Audio Converter uses your browser's own decoders. The sound in most videos is AAC, MP3 or Opus, which current browsers read, and the picture codec does not matter because only the sound is read. A file may still be refused if its sound uses a codec the browser lacks, such as some professional camera formats or surround tracks; the row explains the problem. Converting that file with the camera's own software, or trying another browser, usually solves it.
A video with no sound track has nothing to save; its row reports that no audio track was found. Very large files take longer on phones, where memory is tighter; converting one at a time helps.
Tags, names and privacy
The new file is named after the video with the new extension, and the title, artist, album and cover art the source carries are copied across, so music apps list it properly. Nothing about the file or its contents is sent to Toolkitta. Keep the tab open until you have downloaded the results; closing or reloading it clears the session.
Only extract audio you have the right to use. A personal copy of your own recordings, lectures you attend and media you are licensed to keep is one thing; redistributing someone else's music or broadcasts is another.