Extract the audio track from a video
Lift the soundtrack out of a video without re-encoding it — the original AAC, Opus, MP3 or FLAC stream, copied bit for bit, or converted.
- 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.
How to extract the audio track
- Drop a video in — MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI or MPEG.
- Leave the mode on Keep the original codec. FFmpeg inspects the file, finds the audio stream and copies it out untouched.
- Or switch to Convert the audio if you need a specific format such as MP3 or WAV.
- Press Extract audio. Copying is near-instant; converting takes about as long as the audio is.
- Listen to the result and download it.
Demuxing versus converting
A video file is a container holding parallel streams. Pulling the audio stream out of it without touching the data is called demuxing, and it is what this tool does by default: FFmpeg reads the packets, writes them into an audio container, and never runs a decoder. The output is mathematically identical to the audio inside the video, and the operation takes a second or two whatever the length.
Converting is different — decode to PCM, then encode again with a new codec. That is a second lossy generation if the target is MP3, AAC or Vorbis. Only do it when something downstream genuinely requires that format.
What you get for each source codec
| Audio inside the video | Usually found in | Extracted as | Lossless? |
|---|---|---|---|
| AAC | MP4, MOV, phone recordings | .m4a | Yes — copied |
| Opus | WebM, screen recordings, calls | .ogg | Yes — copied |
| Vorbis | Older WebM and OGV | .ogg | Yes — copied |
| MP3 | AVI, older MP4 | .mp3 | Yes — copied |
| FLAC / ALAC | MKV, MOV masters | .flac / .m4a | Yes — copied |
| AC-3 / E-AC-3 | MKV rips, broadcast | .ac3 / .eac3 | Yes — copied |
For anything outside that list the tool converts instead of copying, and tells you why in the result panel rather than handing you a file nothing can open.
Which tool should you use?
- This one when you want the audio exactly as it is in the video, in the smallest number of steps.
- Video to MP3 when the destination specifically needs MP3, or when you want to trim while extracting.
- Audio converter to change an audio file you have already extracted.
- Mute video to keep the picture and throw the sound away instead.
Everything stays on your device
FFmpeg runs here as WebAssembly inside the page. Recordings of meetings, lectures, therapy sessions or anything else confidential are read from local disk into the tab's memory and never touch a network. After the engine has been cached once, the whole tool works offline.
Questions
How is this different from the video-to-MP3 tool?
This one can copy the existing audio stream instead of re-encoding it, so there is zero quality loss and the export takes a second or two. Video-to-MP3 always produces an MP3, which is a second lossy generation.
What file will I get?
Whatever the video already contains: AAC comes out as .m4a, Opus and Vorbis as .ogg, MP3 as .mp3, FLAC as .flac. The tool detects the codec with FFmpeg before choosing the container.
What if the codec has no standalone container?
For unusual codecs the tool falls back to converting the track to your chosen format and says so in the result, rather than producing a file nothing can open.
Can I extract from an MKV or an AVI?
Yes. FFmpeg reads MKV, AVI, MOV, WebM, MPEG and more, even when the browser itself cannot play them — the preview may be unavailable but the extraction still works.