Extract Audio from Video
Take the sound out of a video, without uploading the video.
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or drag it here
MP4, MOV, WebM, or MKV
- Takes
- MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, and MKV. AVI and WMV are not readable in a browser and will be refused — nothing here can demux them, so converting the file elsewhere first is the only route.
- Size
- Effectively unbounded, because the video never enters memory: the file is read off disk in pieces and the picture is skipped rather than decoded. A 2.3 GB, 15-minute 1080p recording gave up its audio in about a second here, holding 17 MB while it did. What you save is the size of the audio track alone — usually a few percent of the video.
Your file never leaves your browser during processing
How it works
To extract the audio from a video, drop the file onto this page and choose whether to copy the existing audio track out untouched — instant and lossless — or re-encode it as MP3 for a player that needs one. Both run in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
A video file is a container holding separate streams: pictures in one, sound in another, already compressed and sitting side by side. Getting the audio out does not require converting anything — it requires reading the container, lifting the audio packets, and writing them into an audio container instead. That is what the copy option does. The bytes that were the soundtrack are the bytes you get back, at whatever bitrate the video was made with, in a fraction of the time a conversion would take. The single difference is timing rather than sound: audio codecs begin with a few milliseconds of padding that a video hides using an edit list, and a plain audio file has no equivalent, so the copy can start around 20 milliseconds earlier than the video did.
The extension you end up with depends on what the video was carrying. Nearly all MP4 and MOV files hold AAC, which comes out as an .m4a; WebM files hold Opus or Vorbis, which come out as an .ogg. Every current phone, computer, and browser plays both. The MP3 option exists for the cases where something in your workflow genuinely will not — some car stereos, older podcast tools, certain transcription and DJ software — and it costs a decode and a re-encode of audio that was already lossy, which is worth it for compatibility and nothing else.
This is deliberately two clearly-labelled choices rather than one button, for the same reason the PDF compressor here offers two methods: the right answer depends on what you are going to do with the file, and quietly picking one for you would hide a real trade-off. Copy unless you know you need MP3.
The video never leaves your browser. Only the parts of the file needed to find and read the audio stream are touched, the MP3 encoder loads before processing starts if you asked for one, and the counter under the tool watches the network during the work and stays at zero bytes sent. That matters more here than on most pages — a video is often the most personal file someone will ever hand to a converter.
FAQ
Should I copy the audio or convert it to MP3?
Copy it, unless a specific device or app cannot play the result. Copying is instant and loses nothing because the audio track is extracted rather than re-encoded. Converting to MP3 puts a second round of lossy compression over audio that has already been through one.
What file will I get?
From an MP4 or MOV, an .m4a containing the original AAC. From a WebM, an .ogg containing Opus or Vorbis. Both play everywhere current. If you choose MP3 instead, you get an .mp3 at the bitrate you pick.
Does extracting audio reduce the quality?
Not with the copy option — it is a byte-for-byte extraction of the track that was already in the video. The MP3 option does, because it decodes and re-encodes.
How large a video can I use?
Effectively any size. The file is read off disk in pieces and the picture is skipped rather than decoded, so the video never enters memory: a 2.3 GB, 15-minute 1080p recording gave up its audio here in about a second, with 17 MB held while it happened. No limit is imposed and nothing is uploaded. What you save is the size of the audio track alone, usually a few percent of the video.
Which video formats work?
MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, and MKV. AVI and WMV are refused: no browser can demux those containers, so there is nothing to read the audio out of, and converting the video elsewhere first is the only route. Screen recordings, phone video, and camera files are almost always MP4 or MOV.
Why is the MP3 option greyed out?
Because your browser has no decoder for the audio codec in that video — most often AAC on a Firefox build without system codecs. Copying the track out still works, since it requires no decoding at all.
Is the video uploaded?
No. Everything is read and written locally, and the network counter under the tool stays at zero bytes sent while your file is processed.