Video to Audio: How to Keep Only the Sound From a Video

A wedding song recorded on a phone, a speech you want to listen to on the bus, a ringtone from a film scene — sometimes the sound is all you want. Websites that turn video to audio make you upload your file and wade through ads. VideoPlayer does it on the phone, in a few taps, and saves a music file your phone treats like any other song.

How to convert video to audio

1. In the library, long-press the video.
2. Choose Save audio.
3. Drag the handles if you only want part of it — by default the whole video is selected.
4. Tap Save audio. When it’s done, the file is in Music/VideoPlayer.

It appears in your music apps — including VideoPlayer’s own Music tab — and you can share it from the confirmation screen.

M4A, not MP3 — and why that’s fine

The file is saved as M4A (AAC), the format phones encode natively. It plays everywhere MP3 does — every Android phone, iPhone, laptop, car stereo made in the last decade, WhatsApp and Instagram — and at the same file size it usually sounds better than MP3. If a particular app insists on MP3, any converter can change it, but you’ll rarely need to.

Good uses of video to audio

Want to listen without converting?

If you just want to hear a video with the screen off, you don’t need to make a file at all — switch on background play and lock the phone. Converting is for when you want to keep the audio, share it, or play it in another app.

Good to know

• Sound formats: AAC, MP3, Opus and most phone recordings convert directly. Some films use DTS or E-AC3 that the phone can’t re-encode; VideoPlayer tells you if a file can’t be converted.
• Respect copyright: converting your own recordings is fine; check the rights before sharing someone else’s music.
• Need a video clip instead? Use the video cutter.

Turn video to audio for a ringtone

1. Long-press the video and choose Save audio.
2. Drag the handles around the 20–30 seconds you want — ringtones longer than that are rarely heard in full.
3. Save it. The file lands in Music/VideoPlayer.
4. Open your phone’s Settings → Sound → Phone ringtone (the name varies by brand), choose Add or From files, and pick the new file.

The same video to audio file works as a notification sound or an alarm tone too.

Android plays a ringtone from the very start of the file, so set the start handle exactly where you want the tone to begin — the first beat of the chorus, or the opening word of a famous dialogue. A clean start makes all the difference.

AAC and the M4A container are explained in Wikipedia’s article on Advanced Audio Coding.

Frequently asked questions