Video to MP3
Processed locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Quick answer
Video to MP3 pulls the soundtrack out of a video and saves it as an MP3 audio file — ideal for lectures, interviews, music and podcasts you want to listen to without the picture. It drops the video stream entirely (the ffmpeg `-vn` flag) and re-encodes the audio at the bitrate you choose. It runs in your browser using the ~10MB ffmpeg engine, downloaded once; nothing is uploaded.
How to video to mp3
Add your video
Drop an MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM or AVI file onto the drop zone. The first time you run an engine-based tool, the ~10MB ffmpeg core downloads and caches so later runs start instantly.
Pick a bitrate
Choose an MP3 bitrate — 128 kbps for speech, 192 kbps for general use, 320 kbps for music. Higher bitrate means better quality and a larger file.
Extract and download
The tool discards the video track and encodes just the audio to MP3. Download the .mp3 when it finishes — usually in seconds for a short clip.
How does extracting audio actually work?
A video file is a container holding at least two streams: the moving picture and the sound. Extracting audio means telling the engine to keep the audio stream and throw the video stream away — in ffmpeg terms, the -vn (no video) flag. What is left is re-encoded to MP3 at your chosen bitrate. Because the picture is by far the largest part of a video, the resulting MP3 is a fraction of the original size.
Bitrate is the single dial that trades quality against file size. It is the number of kilobits used to describe each second of sound, so a 3-minute song at 320 kbps is roughly two-and-a-half times the size of the same song at 128 kbps.
| Bitrate | Quality | Approx. size / minute | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 128 kbps | Good | ~1 MB | Speech, lectures, podcasts |
| 192 kbps | Very good | ~1.4 MB | General listening, most music |
| 256 kbps | Excellent | ~1.9 MB | Music you care about |
| 320 kbps | Maximum for MP3 | ~2.4 MB | Archiving, critical listening |
When should you rip audio from a video?
The common cases are turning a recorded talk or webinar into something you can play in a podcast app, saving the audio of a music performance, or grabbing a voice memo captured as video on a phone. If your only goal is to silence a clip rather than keep the sound, use Mute Video instead, which strips the audio and keeps the picture — the mirror image of this tool.
Once you have the MP3, you can trim it, change its format to WAV or M4A, or adjust its volume in the audio tools — the same in-browser engine, aimed at sound rather than video. To read a file’s specs before you convert, Video File Info shows the source audio bitrate so you can match it.
Is my video uploaded to extract the audio?
No. The ffmpeg engine runs as WebAssembly inside your own browser tab, so the video is read from your disk into memory and processed there — it is never sent to a server. You can prove it: open your browser’s DevTools, switch to the Network tab, and run an extraction. You will see the one-time engine download, and after that no upload of your file. That privacy matters for confidential recordings, unreleased music and interviews under embargo.
Your files never leave your device
Processed locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded. You can verify it yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab, and use the tool — no upload request is ever made.
Frequently asked questions
Can I convert MP4 to MP3 with this?
Yes. MP4 is the most common input. The tool keeps the MP4’s audio stream, drops the video, and encodes the sound to MP3 at your chosen bitrate — all in your browser.
What bitrate should I use for a podcast or lecture?
For speech, 128 kbps is plenty and keeps files small. Use 192 kbps if there is background music, and 256–320 kbps only for music you want to keep at high quality.
Will the MP3 sound as good as the original video audio?
It is as good as MP3 allows at your bitrate. MP3 is lossy, so pick a bitrate at or near the source audio’s bitrate; going higher than the source cannot recover detail that was never there.
Does this download the whole video first?
There is nothing to download — you supply a local file. The only download is the one-time ~10MB ffmpeg engine, which then caches so subsequent conversions start immediately.
Can I extract audio from a very long video?
Short and medium clips are ideal in a browser. Very long files use a lot of memory since processing happens on your device; if a large file struggles, trim it first or lower the bitrate.
What formats can I feed in?
MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI and M4V. The engine sniffs the actual content, so a mislabelled extension still works as long as it holds an audio track.
Can I get WAV or M4A instead of MP3?
Not from this page — it targets MP3. For lossless WAV or AAC-based M4A, take the extracted audio into the audio converter, which offers those formats.