BrowserTools
Advertisement
Home / Video / Extract Audio from Video

Extract Audio from Video

Pull the audio track out of a video and save it as MP3, M4A, WAV or Opus, locally in your browser.

Loading Extract Audio from Video… If nothing happens, please enable JavaScript.

Extracting audio from a video pulls out just the sound, the music, the speech, the podcast recording, and saves it as a standalone audio file you can play, edit or share without the picture. It is the go-to step for turning a recorded talk into a podcast episode, grabbing a song or sound effect from a clip, or making an audio-only version of a lecture or meeting to listen to on the move.

Frequently asked questions

Is my video uploaded to a server?
No. The audio is extracted entirely in your browser using a WebAssembly build of FFmpeg. Your file stays on your device and the audio is returned as a download, never sent over the network.
Which audio formats can I export?
MP3 (universal compatibility), M4A/AAC (better quality per size, Apple default), WAV (uncompressed and lossless, large files), and Opus (modern, very efficient, great for speech). Pick MP3 if you are unsure.
Will the audio quality drop?
Extracting to WAV is lossless. Extracting to MP3, M4A or Opus re-encodes the audio, which is lossy, but at the quality settings used the difference is minimal. Note that the source audio inside a video is itself already compressed, so re-encoding cannot add back detail that was never there.
What input formats are supported?
Most common video formats FFmpeg can read, including MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV and AVI. You can also feed it an audio file to convert between audio formats.
Why did extraction fail or produce silence?
The most likely cause is that the video has no audio track (some screen recordings are silent), or the audio uses a codec the in-browser build cannot decode. Check that the original plays with sound before extracting.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no hard limit, but the file is loaded into browser memory, so very large videos can exhaust available RAM. Extracting audio is light on processing, so it usually handles large files better than full re-encoding tools.
Can I extract just a section of the audio?
This tool extracts the full audio track. To get only part of it, trim the video first with the Video Trimmer, then extract the audio from the trimmed clip.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once the page and engine have loaded. The first extraction downloads the FFmpeg core (about 30 MB), after which it is cached and works without an internet connection.

About Extract Audio from Video

This tool runs entirely inside your browser using a WebAssembly build of FFmpeg, so the video never leaves your device. It reads the file locally, copies or re-encodes the audio stream into the format you choose, and hands you back an audio file to download. Because there is no upload, it is safe for private recordings, interviews, or any material you would rather not send to an online service.

You can choose the output format to match your need. MP3 is the universally compatible choice and plays on everything. M4A (AAC) offers slightly better quality at the same size and is the Apple-ecosystem default. WAV is uncompressed and lossless, ideal if you plan to edit the audio further, at the cost of a much larger file. Opus is a modern, highly efficient codec, excellent for speech and small sizes, though less universally supported by older players.

Extraction is quick because it only processes the audio, which is a small fraction of a video file, and the picture is simply discarded. As with the other video tools, it works single-threaded to stay compatible with the rest of the site and to keep everything private and local.

Why the soundtrack is the smallest part of a video

In a typical video file the audio is a tiny fraction of the total size, often just five to ten percent. A stereo AAC track might use 128 to 256 kilobits per second, while the video alongside it can use ten or twenty times that. This is partly because hearing is more forgiving of compression than vision in some ways, and partly because there is simply far less data in sound than in millions of coloured pixels per second.

That imbalance is why extracting audio is so fast compared with converting video: the tool can skip the expensive picture entirely and deal only with the small audio stream. It is also why podcasts, audiobooks and music stream comfortably on connections that would struggle with video, and why audio-only modes exist in so many apps as a data-saving option.

Modern audio codecs are remarkably good at this. Opus, used by many messaging and conferencing apps, can deliver clear speech at bitrates so low they would have been unthinkable in the early MP3 era, adapting on the fly between music and voice. It is a quiet example of how much engineering goes into something we rarely think about until the sound cuts out.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement