Video to MP3 Converter

A video to MP3 converter takes the sound track out of a video file and saves it as an audio file you can play anywhere. Our free tool does this inside your browser: drop in your own MP4, WebM or MOV videos, choose MP3 or WAV, pick a bitrate and mono or stereo, and download the audio individually or as a ZIP. Nothing is uploaded, so recordings of meetings, webinars, interviews and client calls stay on your device. It works with files you made or have the right to use. It does not download anything from YouTube or other websites.

How to use the Video to MP3

1. 1 Add your video filesDrop up to ten videos onto the tool or choose them from your device. MP4 and WebM work in every current browser; MOV and M4V work where the browser can decode their audio, which is usually the case in Chrome, Edge and Safari.
2. 2 Choose MP3 or WAVMP3 gives small files that play on every phone, car and podcast app. WAV is uncompressed and better if you plan to edit the audio in other software.
3. 3 Pick a bitrate and channelsFor speech, 128 kbps mono is plenty. For music or anything you will publish, 192 kbps stereo or higher keeps more detail.
4. 4 Extract the audioPress the button and watch the progress. The sound is decoded and encoded on your device, so longer videos take longer on slower computers.
5. 5 Download the resultPreview a single file in the built-in player, download each file separately, or download several at once as a ZIP.

What the converter does, and what it does not

Every video file is really a container holding at least two streams: the pictures and the sound. Extracting the audio means reading the sound stream, decoding it into raw samples and saving those samples in an audio-only format. This tool uses your browser's built-in audio engine, the Web Audio API, to do the decoding, then encodes the result as MP3 with an open-source encoder or writes a plain WAV file. The video pictures are simply ignored, which is why the audio file is usually a small fraction of the video's size.

The tool only works on files already on your computer or phone. It cannot fetch videos from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or any other website, and it never will. That is deliberate: downloading from those platforms usually breaks their terms of service, and the content almost always belongs to someone else. If you want to listen to a creator's work offline, use the platform's own offline or download features, such as YouTube Premium, or contact the creator and ask for the audio.

Good reasons to turn your videos into audio

For small businesses and freelancers, the audio inside a video is often more useful than the video itself. Typical uses include:

• Turning a recorded webinar, workshop or live stream into a podcast episode.
• Saving the sound of a Teams, Zoom or Google Meet recording so it is easier to listen back to, share or send for transcription.
• Extracting a voice-over or interview from a phone video to reuse in a different edit.
• Keeping a lightweight copy of a training video for listening on the commute.
• Pulling a music bed or jingle you own out of an old promotional video.
• Reducing a large file to a small MP3 that can be emailed when the video is too big to attach.

Choosing a bitrate: 128, 192, 256 or 320 kbps

MP3 is a lossy format: it saves space by discarding sound the ear is least likely to notice. The bitrate controls how much data is kept for each second of audio, and so how large the file is and how close it sounds to the original.

At 128 kbps a minute of stereo audio takes roughly 1 MB. That is ample for speech, meetings and most podcasts, and it is the safest choice when file size matters. At 192 kbps, about 1.4 MB a minute, music sounds clean to most listeners on normal headphones and speakers. 256 kbps and 320 kbps (around 2.4 MB a minute) keep more of the high frequencies and are worth using when the audio may be edited again or played on good equipment.

A higher bitrate cannot add quality that is not in the video. Many phone and screen recordings already store their sound as AAC at 128 kbps or less, so converting them at 320 kbps produces a larger file without making it sound better. If you are unsure, start at 192 kbps.

Mono or stereo, MP3 or WAV

Stereo keeps separate left and right channels, which matters for music and for recordings made with a stereo microphone. Most spoken content, including meetings, lectures and phone videos, is effectively the same in both channels, so mono sounds identical while halving the size of a WAV file. MP3 encoders handle mono efficiently too, so mono at a given bitrate can sound slightly cleaner than stereo at the same bitrate.

WAV stores the decoded sound without any further compression, as 16-bit PCM, the same resolution as a CD. Choose it when you plan to edit the audio in software such as Audacity, GarageBand or Adobe Audition, or when another tool asks specifically for WAV. Expect around 10 MB per minute of stereo audio. For anything you will share or listen to, MP3 is the practical choice.

Which video formats work

Because decoding is done by your browser, support depends on the browser and on the audio codec inside the video rather than on the file extension. MP4 and M4V files with AAC audio, the format produced by almost every phone, camera and screen recorder, work in all current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. WebM files with Opus or Vorbis audio work in Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and in recent Safari versions.

MOV files from iPhones and Macs usually contain AAC audio and work in Chrome, Edge and Safari; Firefox support is less consistent. MKV, AVI and WMV files often use codecs browsers cannot decode, such as AC-3, DTS or Windows Media Audio. If a file fails, the tool will tell you: try a different browser, or export the video as MP4 from the app that created it and try again.

A video with no sound track, such as a muted screen capture or a GIF saved as MP4, has nothing to extract and will also show an error.

Privacy, file size and speed

Most online converters upload your video to a server, convert it there and send the result back. This one does the whole job on your device, so the file never leaves it. That avoids upload waiting times and file size limits imposed by a server, and it means confidential recordings, such as client calls, HR meetings or medical appointments, are not handed to a third party. For UK organisations this is a simple way to reduce data protection risk under UK GDPR.

The trade-off is that your computer does the work. The whole sound track is decoded into memory before it is encoded, so very long videos need plenty of free memory. Files of an hour or so are fine on most modern laptops; multi-hour recordings may be too much for older phones and tablets. Encoding usually runs many times faster than real time, and the progress shown on the button tells you how far it has got. Keep the tab open until the download appears.

Examples you can copy

128 kbps   about 0.96 MB   speech, meetings, podcasts
192 kbps   about 1.44 MB   music, general use
256 kbps   about 1.92 MB   high quality
320 kbps   about 2.40 MB   maximum MP3 quality
WAV 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz   about 10.1 MB

Zoom or Teams recording    MP3, 128 kbps, mono
Webinar to podcast         MP3, 192 kbps, mono or stereo
Music you own              MP3, 256-320 kbps, stereo
Audio for editing          WAV, stereo

ffmpeg -i recording.mp4 -vn -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k recording.mp3

Common mistakes to avoid

Frequently asked questions