How to Extract Audio from a Video

The quickest route is a converter page with the output format already chosen. For an MP4 video that means MP4 to MP3, MP4 to WAV or MP4 to M4A; there are also pages for MOV to MP3, MKV to MP3 and WebM to MP3.

• Open the page for your video format and the audio format you want.
• Add the video. It is read and processed in your browser, so it is not uploaded.
• If the video has more than one audio track, such as different languages or a commentary, choose the one you want.
• Pick a bitrate and sample rate, or leave the defaults, which follow the source.
• Convert and download the audio file.

Match the format to what you will do with the audio next. Our audio formats guide covers each one in more depth.

• MP3: the safest choice for sharing and for older devices, car stereos and simple players.
• M4A (AAC): the format most phone videos already use for their audio, and a good choice for Apple devices and music libraries.
• WAV: uncompressed, ideal if you are going to edit the audio in a program like Audacity or a DAW, or feed it into transcription software. Files are large.
• FLAC: lossless but compressed, good for archiving a concert recording or anything you may re-encode later.
• Opus or OGG: very efficient for speech, good for voice notes and web use where size matters.

The audio in a video is almost always already compressed, usually AAC at somewhere between 96 and 320 kbps. Converting it cannot make it better than that source. Choosing WAV or FLAC adds no further compression loss, which is why they are the right choice for editing, but they do not recover detail the original encoder threw away. One detail: our converter writes WAV as 16-bit PCM, so a rare 24-bit soundtrack (from a camera or screen recorder that stores uncompressed audio) is reduced to 16-bit; for ordinary AAC soundtracks that makes no audible difference.

Converting to another lossy format such as MP3 is a second round of lossy compression. At a similar or higher bitrate than the source the difference is very hard to hear; at a much lower bitrate it becomes audible. Our converters re-encode the audio into the format you choose rather than copying the original stream, so keeping the bitrate at 100% of the source is the safest setting for music. For speech, a lower bitrate usually sounds fine and saves space.

If your video is in a format without a dedicated page, open the Audio Converter and add the video file anyway: it accepts video files as long as they contain an audio stream, and it offers MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A, OGG, Opus, AIFF and AC-3 as outputs. The Video Converter can do the same job if you choose an audio format as the output.

Both tools handle several files at once, which is handy for a folder of lecture recordings or a season of video podcasts.

Sometimes you want the opposite: the video without its soundtrack, for example to replace background music or to share a clip silently. The Video Compressor has an audio setting that can drop the audio entirely, and the Video Editor lets you mute a timeline track and lay different audio underneath before exporting.

A few details make the difference between a usable extract and a frustrating one.

• Trim first: if you only need a few minutes of a long video, cut the section with the Video Cutter before extracting, or trim the audio afterwards.
• Keep the sample rate: the default follows the source, usually 44.1 or 48 kHz. Changing it rarely helps.
• Check for multiple tracks: films and screen recordings sometimes carry separate microphone and system-audio tracks. Pick the right one before converting.
• Respect copyright: extracting audio for personal use is common, but redistributing someone else's music or recordings may need permission.