Convert AVI to MP3
Rip the audio from old AVI video into MP3 with a bitrate selector and a batch queue, entirely inside your browser. No signup, no upload, no cap.
- Runs in your browser
- Files are never uploaded
- Free, no account
First use downloads the 10 MB video engine from this site. After that it is cached and works offline. It is WebAssembly served from onthisdevice.com — no third-party CDN — and your file is still processed entirely on your own device.
Getting sound out of a twenty-year-old file
AVI files hold audio in whatever format was convenient at the time they were made, and "at the time" often means an era when Windows codecs were installed one by one from a CD. FFmpeg carries decoders for nearly all of them — MP3, AC-3, PCM, IMA ADPCM, MS ADPCM, GSM, μ-law — which is why a file your media player gave up on will usually still yield its soundtrack here.
The audio is decoded to raw samples and re-encoded with LAME as MP3. That does add a second generation of loss when the source was already MP3, which is common in DivX-era AVI files; picking 320 kbps makes the difference academic on material of that vintage.
Typical reasons people do this
- Rescuing a recording. A camcorder tape capture where the video is unwatchable but the conversation is worth keeping.
- Lecture and seminar archives. Whole shelves of institutional AVI files that nobody will ever watch but people still need to hear.
- Transcription. Speech-to-text tools take audio, not 1.5 GB of video, and mono at 96 kbps is all they need.
- Music from an old video collection. Concert footage and TV captures whose soundtrack is the part worth carrying to a phone.
When it comes out silent
A small number of AVI files use audio compressed with a proprietary ACM codec that was installed as a Windows system component and never standardised. No modern decoder ships those, so the audio stream cannot be read at all. If that happens the page reports it rather than handing you a valid-looking but empty MP3 — an empty result that looks like a success is worse than an error, because you only discover it later.
The other cause of silence is simpler: some AVI files genuinely have no audio stream. The error message distinguishes the two cases.
Mono, and when to use it
Old camcorder audio is very often mono already, duplicated across two channels. Ticking "downmix to mono" halves the file size with no loss whatsoever in that case. For anything with real stereo content — music, a proper recording setup — leave it off.
| Source material | Suggested setting | One hour becomes |
|---|---|---|
| Camcorder voice, single mic | 96 kbps mono | ~41 MB |
| Lecture or seminar | 128 kbps mono | ~55 MB |
| TV capture with music | 192 kbps stereo | ~82 MB |
| Concert footage | 320 kbps stereo | ~137 MB |
Batch the whole folder
Drop in every AVI at once. They convert one after another with a progress row each, and everything can be downloaded as a single ZIP at the end. There is no file counter, no daily quota and no account, because there is no server on the other end that would need paying for.
Questions
The AVI already contains MP3 audio — is this lossless?
Not on this page: the audio is decoded and re-encoded with LAME, so a second generation of loss is added. Choose 320 kbps to make that difference academic. A true lossless extraction of an embedded MP3 stream is a niche operation better done with a desktop tool.
Why does my old AVI produce a silent MP3?
Some AVI files from the 2000s use audio codecs that were never standardised — proprietary ACM entries that no modern decoder ships. If the result is silent, the page reports it rather than handing you an empty file quietly.
Can I convert a whole folder of AVI files?
Drop them all in at once. They convert one after another with a progress row each, and a single ZIP download at the end. Nothing counts your usage because there is nothing on the other end to count it.
How large can the AVI be?
Audio extraction is one of the lighter jobs FFmpeg does, so multi-gigabyte AVI files are usually fine on a desktop. The limit is your device’s memory, not a rule we invented.