How to use it
- Drop a video or choose one. Its length appears under the file name once the browser has read the header.
- Pick an MP3 preset – keep V2 unless you need a fixed bitrate – and tick “Extract only a part” to set a range.
- Press Extract MP3. The progress bar covers the encode; the first run also downloads the engine.
- Listen to the preview, check the size and bitrate, then download.
Example
A 12-minute 720p lecture recording (180 MB, AAC 128 kbps audio) extracted with V2 takes around 40 s on a laptop and gives a 16 MB MP3 with an average bitrate near 185 kbps. The same track at 128 kbps constant is 11 MB; at 320 kbps it is 28 MB without sounding better than the AAC source, which was already lossy.
What FFmpeg does
The tool runs the WebAssembly build of FFmpeg in a Web Worker with one command:
ffmpeg [-ss START -t LENGTH] -i input.mp4 -vn -map 0:a:0 -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 2 -id3v2_version 3 output.mp3-vndrops the picture and-map 0:a:0selects the first audio stream explicitly, so a silent video fails with a clear “no audio track” message instead of an empty file.-c:a libmp3lamere-encodes with LAME.-q:a 0/2/4are the VBR presets V0 (≈245 kbps), V2 (≈190 kbps) and V4 (≈165 kbps);-b:a 320k/192k/128kgive a constant bitrate. MP3 cannot hold AAC or Opus data as-is, so an encode is always needed.-ssand-tbefore-ilimit the range; because the audio is decoded anyway, the cut is sample-accurate.-id3v2_version 3writes ID3v2.3 tags, the version Windows Explorer and older players read. Title and artist tags from the source container are carried over; embedded cover art is not.
Sample rate and channel count follow the source (typically 48 kHz stereo from cameras, 44.1 kHz from music). The engine is single-threaded and limited to 2 GB of memory, so keep inputs under a few hundred MB.
Sources: FFmpeg – libmp3lame encoder options, Hydrogenaudio – LAME VBR presets and typical bitrates, ffmpeg.wasm documentation.
Questions
- VBR or 320 kbps – which should I choose?
- VBR V2 for almost everything: it spends bits where the music needs them and averages about 190 kbps. Choose 320 kbps constant only when a platform or device requires a fixed bitrate, and 128 kbps for speech where size matters more than fidelity.
- Will the MP3 sound better than the video’s audio?
- No. Video audio is usually AAC or Opus, already lossy; MP3 encoding adds a second lossy step. V2 keeps that loss inaudible for most people, but a higher bitrate cannot restore detail the source never had.
- Why does it say the video has no audio track?
- Screen recordings, time-lapses and some exports contain no audio stream at all, and some containers hold audio in a codec the browser build cannot decode. Open the file in VLC and check Codec information to see what it contains.
- Is the video uploaded?
- No. The video is read into the FFmpeg engine inside your browser; the only network traffic is the engine itself (about 32 MB from the unpkg CDN, cached afterwards).