Convert MP4 to MP3
Drop an MP4 and get its sound back as an MP3, the audio format every phone, car, and music app plays. Pick a bitrate and the MP3 is made again, with its size shown before you download it.
Play or drag the video to a moment, then press Set from video to use that time as the start or the end. Times can be typed too.
The result appears here once a video is open.
How to use it#
- Drop an MP4 onto the box above, or click it to choose one. An M4A works the same way.
- Pick a bitrate. 192 kbps suits most music and speech.
- To keep only part of the sound, set the start and end, typed or taken from the preview with Set from video.
- Play the MP3 in the preview, then download it.
What happens to the sound#
An MP4 from a phone, a camera, or a screen recorder almost always holds its sound as AAC, not MP3, so the sound cannot simply be copied out. It is decoded and encoded again as MP3 with LAME, the long-established MP3 encoder, which runs inside this tab. The picture is not touched, so the conversion is quick: most of the time goes on the sound alone.
Each re-encode loses a little, which at 192 kbps and above is very hard to hear. An MP4 whose sound is MP3 already is the exception: that sound is copied into the MP3 unchanged, and the bitrate setting greys out because there is nothing to choose.
Choosing a bitrate#
128 kbps is plenty for speech, such as a lecture, a meeting, or a podcast, and makes the smallest file, about 1 MB a minute. 192 kbps is the default and suits music for most listeners. 256 and 320 kbps are for music you will listen to closely or keep, at about 2 and 2.4 MB a minute.
An MP3 cannot sound better than the sound it came from. The sound in a phone video, or in one saved from the web, has already been compressed once, so 320 kbps from those mostly makes a bigger file. When in doubt, 192 kbps is the setting nobody regrets.
M4A files, surround sound, and several tracks#
An M4A is an MP4 with no picture, which is how iTunes, Apple's Voice Memos, and many recorders save sound, so M4A to MP3 works here in the same way, as does an M4V, the MP4 variant that Apple apps export. The title, artist, album, and cover art in the file go into the MP3 as ID3 tags, so a song keeps its name and picture in a music app. Sound in 5.1 surround, as some films and cameras record it, is mixed down to stereo, because an MP3 holds two channels at most.
An MP3 holds a single sound track. When the MP4 has several, such as two languages or a commentary, the first one that can be read is used and the page names the others it leaves out.
Frequently asked questions#
Does converting MP4 to MP3 lose quality?
#
A little, because the sound in an MP4 is nearly always AAC and has to be encoded again as MP3. At 192 kbps or more the difference is very hard to hear. When the MP4 already holds MP3 sound, it is copied out with no loss at all.
Which bitrate should I pick?
#
192 kbps for most things. Pick 128 kbps for speech, where it saves a third of the size with no audible cost, and 256 or 320 kbps for music you want at its best. A higher bitrate than the original sound had only makes a larger file.
Can I take only part of the sound?
#
Yes. Set the start and the end, typed in seconds or taken from the preview with Set from video, and only that part goes into the MP3. It suits a song from a longer video or one answer from a recorded talk.
Can I convert M4A to MP3?
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Yes. An M4A is an MP4 file that holds only sound, so drop it here and it is converted the same way as a video, with its title, artist, and cover art kept.
How do I get the sound from an iPhone video?
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An iPhone saves videos as MOV, so drop it on MOV to MP3 instead, which works the same way. A video the iPhone has shared as an MP4 works here.
Why is there no sound in the MP3?
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The page checks the sound before it starts, so an MP3 with no sound should not be made. If the MP4 has no sound track at all, the page says so. If the sound is in a format your browser cannot read, the page names it and suggests Chrome, Edge, or Safari, which read the most.
Does it work in an older version of Safari?
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Yes, for up to 30 minutes of sound, and that includes Safari on an iPhone with an older iOS. An older Safari, such as Safari 17, has no way for a page to read the sound in a video piece by piece, so it reads the whole sound in one go instead, which has to fit in the memory of the tab. For a longer video, cut it into parts with the start and end, or use a current Chrome, Edge, or Safari, which read the sound a piece at a time and handle far longer videos.
Is my video uploaded?
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No. The sound is read from the video and converted inside this browser tab, and the MP3 is handed straight to your downloads. Nothing is sent to a server.