Any video with a sound track can become an MP3: MOV clips from a camera, MKV and WebM downloads, old AVI, WMV and FLV files, 3GP videos from older phones, DVD VOB files or TS and MTS recordings. The picture is left out and the sound is saved as an MP3 that plays everywhere.
How to convert a video to MP3
- Upload the video (up to 2 GB and 4 hours).
- Keep Save as: MP3 and pick a bitrate (192 kbps by default).
- Download the MP3.
Per format
- MOV, MKV, WebM, 3GP, TS/MTS, VOB: the sound (AAC, Opus, Vorbis, AC-3, MP2, AMR or PCM) is decoded and encoded as MP3.
- AVI and FLV: these often already contain MP3 sound. It is then copied into the MP3 file unchanged, with no quality loss, as long as Keep the original sound unchanged is on.
- WMV: WMA sound is encoded as MP3.
- Surround sound is mixed down to stereo, since MP3 holds at most two channels.
Quality settings
- 320 or 256 kbps: for music you care about, if the source is good.
- 192 kbps: the default; transparent for most music.
- 128 kbps: smaller, fine for most listening.
- 64 or 96 kbps: speech, lectures, podcasts.
A higher bitrate than the source can't add quality: a video with 96 kbps sound gains nothing from a 320 kbps MP3.
Tips
- For the smallest files with good quality, choose Opus; for the most compatible, MP3.
- To keep the original sound exactly, choose the format it already has (the result of a first conversion tells you the source codec), for example M4A for AAC.
- A video with several sound tracks gives the main one.
More about what this tool reads and writes: Extract Audio from Video.