VideoLan VLC Media Player is perhaps the most liked and used media player application in the world (if you ignore the Windows Media Player that comes installed in Windows by default). What people love about VLC Player is its ability to play all kinds of media files (both audio and video) without requiring any codecs to be installed in your computer and that holds true for all the platforms – Windows, Linux, Mac, Android or iOS. What many people do not know is that VLC player is much more than just a media player. It can also be used for converting media formats, streaming videos and more.
One of the ways media conversion feature of the VLC media player can be used is to save or extract the audio from a video file in the MP3 format. Here is how:
- Launch VLC media player, select Media → Convert/Save from the menubar. You can also use the hotkey Ctrl+R to open the media conversion window.
- In the media conversion window, select a source of media for conversion (usually a video file located somewhere on your hard disk), and then click on the Convert button. Instead of clicking on the Convert button you can also use the hotkey Alt+O.
- In the next window, you have to choose the conversion option. You can select the conversion profile Audio – MP3 from the drop-down list. After this select a destination file where the extracted media is saved and click on the Start button.
- In a few seconds or minutes, depending on the length of the source media file selected, you will have the extracted MP3 file. You can play it in any media player on your PC or your mobile phone.
Conclusion: You do not need any extra conversion tools when you have VLC media player installed in your PC. It is able to extract MP3 audio tracks from any type of video media files.