VLC is one of the most popular multimedia content players, mainly because it is free, freely distributed and open source. Another interesting point of this software is its large number of tools that allow you to take screenshots, convert a multimedia file from one format to another, download YouTube videos, and other functionalities.
How to Extract Audio From a Video Using VLC Media Player
Among these tools, we have one that allows us to extract the audio from a video in a simple way, through a few steps. If you are interested in carrying out this procedure, a reading of this article will be enough to be able to extract audio from a video file in mp3 or another preferred format.
Convert video file to audio
Following the steps in this guide you will quickly get the audio file you need. First of all, if you don’t have the player yet, click here to go to the download page. It is worth noting that this application is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS.
- Once the VLC is open, click on the Media menu and then select the Convert option.
- There a window will be displayed, where you must click on the Add button.
- Now you must go to the folder that contains the file of interest, select it and click Open or press Enter.
- In the Profile section you will be able to display the list of multimedia formats, among which you will have to search for those corresponding to audio files and choose one of them with one click.
- As the last setup step, click Explore. This will open the file manager, allowing you to choose the path where the file will go once the process is finished, as well as a name for it. When you’re done with that, click Save.
- It only remains to click on Start, and wait for the program to do its job. The time this process takes depends on the length of the video.
Thus, by following these steps, you will be able to obtain the audio from a video file successfully, without needing other programs other than VLC.
Adjust the quality of audio extracted from a video
In case the audio is of low quality or is of a higher quality than necessary (which implies that it takes up more space), this can be adjusted by resorting to some VLC options.
- Go back to Medium >> Convert, and click on the ‘wrench’ icon.
- There, in the Audio codec tab, you must modify the bit rate. A medium-high quality mp3 file is usually 256 kb / s, and a high-quality one is 320 kb/s.
- Finally, click the Save button to generate the new audio file with the desired quality.
The quality of the audio is highly dependent on the quality of the video file so adjusting these details may not make any difference in the audio that is extracted if the video is of poor quality.
Other methods
In the next section we will introduce you to other methods that will allow you to extract the audio from a video, without the need for the VLC player.
Online tools
The following tools are free and easy-to-use online platforms.
- 123apps: This platform is easy to manipulate, also, if the tool seems somewhat confusing, they have a small tutorial to use it. 123apps also has other audio and video tools that may be of interest to you.
- Clideo: << Simple editor, without wasting time >> is one of the phrases that this platform uses. It has an intuitive handling so that the user experience is as fast and efficient as possible.
- BeeCut: This is a more advanced tool than the others since it allows you to extract only the audio fragment of interest with a small editor, quite simple to use.
Mobile applications
If the video is on your mobile phone, and you find yourself without a way to access a computer, we also indicate some applications that you can use to obtain the audio from a video.
- Doorbell: This is one of the most popular Android tools to get audio from a video. An efficient, complete and easy-to-use app.
- Audio extractor: It is a simple audio editor that allows you to separate the audio from a video and save it in three possible formats: mp3, wav and aac.
- Audio Converter: For iOS users, we propose this application to extract the audio from a video from an iPhone. It is quite popular and has a fairly intuitive interface.