Ever wanted to extract background music, sound or audio from a movie or video on your Mac? There are various ways to accomplish this on Mac. The following guides will help you export audio from videos on Mac. We’ll discuss two different methods through which you can save video as audio using QuickTime Player and iMovie, both are provided by Apple and already installed on Mac.
Contents
- Method 1. Extract audio from video with Quicktime Player
- Method 2. Extract audio from video in iMovie
- More video to audio conversion solutions
Method 1. Steps to extract audio from video with Quicktime Player
QuickTime Player that comes with your Mac can help you get the job done for free. Do not think of Quicktime as a video player. It is far more than just a media player. For example, you can use it to record movie, audio and your computer screen, edit videos, extract audio or music from movies, etc.
Extract audio from video using QuickTime Player is easy as long as it’s not copy protected by DRM. Launch the QuickTime player on your Mac. Open the video or movie file, in MOV, MP4, M4V, AVI or other compatible format, using QuickTime player. Choose File >> Export As >> Audio Only…. See below screenshot.
After that you will get a file save dialogue where you can give the audio file a name, choose a folder to save it. Click Save button, the audio file will be exported from the source video file and saved as a AAC audio file in .m4a format.
Method 2. Extract audio from video in iMovie on Mac
Open the iMovie app. Find the movie or video file in Finder, drag and drop it to the timeline of iMovie to open it.
Open the File menu, choose Share > File, optionally type in description and tags for the audio to be exported, choose Audio Only in the Format menu, select an audio file format you desire, such as AAC, MP3, AIFF, WAV.
Click Next button to open a new dialog where you can optionally type in a new name and select a different location to save the audio file from iMovie to your Mac. In this way, you can export the full audio track from the entire movie or video on Mac.
More video to audio conversion solutions
Many Mac users may not use GarageBand on their Mac. It is a fully equipped music creation studio right inside your Mac. We can also use this free tool to export audio from video on Mac.
Many third-party video and media players and editors offer the video to audio conversion tool as well, notably the VLC media player, LosslessCut, etc.