Video to Audio Extractor
Pull the audio track out of a video and save it as MP3 or WAV.
About this tool
Pulls just the audio track out of a video file — no picture, just sound. Choose MP3 or WAV to convert it, or "Original (no re-encoding)" to pull the audio stream out byte-for-byte exactly as it's stored in the video — no quality loss and much faster, since there's no re-encoding step. Runs entirely in your browser using ffmpeg.wasm, a WebAssembly build of the real ffmpeg; your video is never uploaded anywhere.
The ffmpeg engine (about 32MB) is only downloaded the first time you use this tool, not when the page loads.
Common reasons to do this: saving the audio from a screen-recorded tutorial or webinar so it plays like a podcast, pulling a lecture or interview recording off video so it's small enough to listen to offline, or grabbing the music/sound from a short clip without keeping the picture around. Anywhere you'd otherwise keep a large video file just to hear it, extracting the audio alone is a fraction of the size.
Choosing MP3, WAV, or Original:
| File size | Quality | Speed | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MP3 | Small (compressed) | Very good, small trade-off at higher bitrates | Re-encodes, so a little slower | Sharing, playback on any device, keeping file size down |
| WAV | Large (uncompressed) | Bit-for-bit accurate to the decoded audio | Re-encodes, so a little slower | Further editing in audio software where re-compressing repeatedly would degrade quality |
| Original | Whatever the video's audio stream already was | Exactly as stored — no re-encoding at all | Fastest — just copies data | Archiving or further processing without any quality loss, when a .mka container is acceptable |
Picking an MP3 bitrate. 128 kbps is fine for spoken word (a lecture, a podcast, a screen-recording voiceover) where file size matters more than fidelity. 192 kbps (the default) is a solid middle ground most people can't distinguish from the source. 320 kbps is the highest MP3 allows — reach for it for music or anything you're archiving long-term, at roughly 2.4× the file size of 128 kbps for the same duration.
Need to cut the video down to a specific section before extracting, or trim the resulting audio afterward? See the video trimmer and audio trimmer. To convert between other audio formats once you have the extracted file, or to remove silence from it, see the audio converter and audio silence remover; to get a text transcript instead of just the audio, see speech to text.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this work if the video has no audio track?
- No — if the source video is silent, there's nothing to extract and the process will fail with an error.
- Why did nothing happen for a while after I clicked extract?
- The first click downloads and initializes the ~32MB ffmpeg engine, which takes a moment depending on your connection. After that first load, extraction itself is usually fast — "Original" in particular finishes almost instantly, since it just copies the existing audio data instead of re-encoding it.
- What's the difference between MP3, WAV, and "Original"?
- WAV is uncompressed — larger files, no quality loss. MP3 is compressed and much smaller, with a small, generally inaudible quality trade-off at higher bitrates. "Original" doesn't re-encode at all — it copies the video's existing audio stream (whatever codec it already uses — AAC, Opus, MP3, etc.) directly into a
.mka(Matroska Audio) file, which is truly lossless and very fast, but is a less universally recognized file type than MP3/WAV — most modern players (VLC, most phone/desktop media apps) open it fine, but double-check before relying on it somewhere very format-strict. - Is my video uploaded anywhere?
- No — the entire process, including the ffmpeg engine itself, runs locally in your browser via WebAssembly. Nothing is sent to any server.
- Which MP3 bitrate should I choose?
- 128 kbps for spoken word where file size matters most, 192 kbps (the default) as a good general-purpose choice, and 320 kbps for music or long-term archiving where you want the best quality MP3 allows.
- Can I extract audio from just part of a video, not the whole thing?
- Not directly here — this always extracts the entire audio track. Cut the video down to the section you want first with the video trimmer, then extract audio from that shorter clip, or trim the extracted audio file afterward with the audio trimmer.
- Will this work on my phone's browser?
- It should, on a modern mobile browser with enough free memory to hold the video and run the ffmpeg engine — but a large, high-resolution video can hit a mobile browser's memory limits where a desktop browser wouldn't. If extraction fails on a big file, try a shorter clip or switch to a desktop browser.
- Why doesn't the exported audio file size match the video's file size?
- Audio file size depends on the audio bitrate and duration, not the video's resolution or its own file size — a 4K video and a 480p video with the same audio track and bitrate produce identically sized MP3s, since the video data itself is discarded entirely.