Is my video uploaded?

No. The file is read by your own browser and the audio is decoded there. Nothing is sent anywhere, which is worth knowing before putting an unreleased recording into any website that offers this.

Why will my AVI or MKV not open?

Because browsers do not ship decoders for those containers. The same file will usually open in VLC, and converting it to MP4 first is the route if you need it here.

Can I extract just part of the audio?

Save the whole track here, then cut it with the Trim Audio tool, which shows the waveform and saves either side of the cut without re-encoding if you choose WAV.

Which bitrate should I pick?

192 kbps for anything with music in it, 128 for a podcast or an interview, 96 for plain speech. Going above 192 on audio that came out of a video rarely recovers anything, since the source was compressed already.

Extract Audio from Video

Takes the sound out of a video and leaves the pictures behind. The audio track is decoded straight from the file, so a 500 MB video gives up its soundtrack without any of it being uploaded.

Choose a video or drop it hereMP4, MOV or WebM, up to 500 MB. Only the audio is read.

Runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded.

How to use Extract Audio from Video

1Choose a video, or drag it onto the box.
2Pick MP3 with a bitrate, or WAV for a lossless copy.
3Press save.
4Download the audio.

Only the audio is read

A video file holds separate tracks, and the browser's audio decoder can read the sound out of one without touching the pictures. That makes this quick even on a long recording: no frames are decoded, no canvas is involved, and the work is the same as opening an MP3.

It also means the size of the video barely matters. A 400 MB screen recording with ten minutes of narration takes about as long as a ten-minute MP3 would.

MP3 or WAV

MP3 at 192 kbps is the sensible default for speech and music alike, and a ten-minute extract lands around 14 MB. Lower bitrates are there for voice recordings, where 96 kbps is usually indistinguishable.

WAV is lossless and roughly ten times the size. It is the right choice when the audio is going into an editor afterwards, because a second lossy pass on top of the video's already lossy audio is worth avoiding.

What this does to the quality

The audio inside a video is already compressed, usually as AAC. Extracting it decodes that and encodes again, so an MP3 from here is a second-generation copy. At 192 kbps the difference is hard to hear, and saving as WAV avoids the second pass entirely.

Copying the original AAC track out untouched would be better still and is not possible here: it needs a tool that can take an MP4 apart and write an M4A back, which is a different piece of work from decoding.

Limits

500 MB per file, and 30 minutes of audio once decoded.
MP4, MOV and WebM open. AVI, MKV and anything using HEVC usually will not, because the browser cannot play them.
The audio is re-encoded rather than copied out of the container untouched.
The video itself is not changed, trimmed or saved.

Frequently asked questions

Is my video uploaded?: No. The file is read by your own browser and the audio is decoded there. Nothing is sent anywhere, which is worth knowing before putting an unreleased recording into any website that offers this.
Why will my AVI or MKV not open?: Because browsers do not ship decoders for those containers. The same file will usually open in VLC, and converting it to MP4 first is the route if you need it here.
Can I extract just part of the audio?: Save the whole track here, then cut it with the Trim Audio tool, which shows the waveform and saves either side of the cut without re-encoding if you choose WAV.
Which bitrate should I pick?: 192 kbps for anything with music in it, 128 for a podcast or an interview, 96 for plain speech. Going above 192 on audio that came out of a video rarely recovers anything, since the source was compressed already.