Video to MP3 Converter
Turn a video into an MP3 without uploading it anywhere. Pick a bitrate, convert, and download — the file is read straight off your disk and the encoding happens on your own machine.
Which bitrate to pick
Bitrate is the whole decision when making an MP3 — it sets both the size and how much of the original survives. These are exact figures, not rules of thumb: an MP3 at a fixed bitrate is kbps ÷ 8 kilobytes per second, whatever is in it.
| Bitrate | Per minute | Per hour | Choose it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 128 kbps | 937.5 KB | 54.9 MB | Speech, podcasts and rough cuts. Audible on music with headphones, invisible on dialogue. |
| 192 kbps | 1.4 MB | 82.4 MB | The default, and the right answer for most extracts. Transparent enough for music at roughly half the size of 320. |
| 320 kbps | 2.3 MB | 137.3 MB | The most MP3 can carry. Choose it when the result is the master you keep, or when a client specified it. |
Sizes are the encoder's own arithmetic, so they hold regardless of what the audio contains. Planning a video export rather than an extract? The bitrate calculator runs the same maths for picture and sound together.
When not to make an MP3
A video does not contain an MP3. It contains a compressed audio stream — nearly always AAC — sitting inside a container. Converting that to MP3 decodes it and compresses it again with a different codec, which is a second generation of loss on audio that was already lossy once.
That is usually fine, and at 192 kbps and above most people cannot hear it. But if the destination will accept AAC, copying the original stream into an .m4a is instant, bit-identical and typically a smaller file than the MP3 would have been. The audio extractor does that with the format left on Original.
Choose MP3 anyway when the thing receiving the file is old, unknown, or picky — car stereos, DJ software, hardware samplers, transcription services with a fixed upload filter. Universal support is the entire reason the format is still here.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert a video to MP3 without uploading it?
Drop the video onto this page. The conversion runs in your browser using ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly, so the file is read from disk and decoded locally. The only thing downloaded is the engine itself, once per session.
What bitrate should I choose?
192 kbps is the default and the right answer for most extracts — transparent enough for music at about 82.4 MB per hour. Drop to 128 kbps for speech, and use 320 kbps only when the MP3 is the copy you intend to keep.
Does converting to MP3 lose quality?
Yes, a little, and it is unavoidable. The audio in a video is already compressed — usually AAC — so making an MP3 decodes it and compresses it a second time. The loss is inaudible for most people at 192 kbps and up, but if you need an exact copy, extract the original track instead of converting it.
How long does a conversion take?
Seconds for most files. Audio-only work skips the picture entirely, so there is no video to decode or re-encode — the slow part of browser-based conversion simply does not apply here. A one hour video is usually done well inside a minute.
Which video formats can I convert?
MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, M4V and AVI, plus audio-only files, up to 200.0 MB. If a video has more than one audio track, each one is listed so you can pick the one you want rather than getting whichever came first.
Can I convert only part of the video?
Yes. Tick 'Extract a range only' and set a start and end point before converting, and only that section is encoded. That is also the fastest way to grab one line of dialogue or a single music cue out of a long recording.