extractaudio.sh extracts the audio portion of a video file.

This is done without transcoding by extracting the native audio track (auto-detected as MP3 or M4A) from container formats like MOV/AVI/FLV/M4V/MP4.

Syntax: extractaudio INPUT.ext

The audio track is saved as INPUT.ext.mp3 or INPUT.ext.m4a.

This will of course work only, if the video file contains an audio track in MP3 or M4A/AAC format. MOV/AVI/FLV files may contain MP3 or M4A/AAC, MP4 or M4V files contain only M4A=AAC.

Requires:

• FFmpeg
• MP4Box (only used for M4A; without it iTunes will not recognise the M4A)

Examples:

You have some videos from YouTube and want to extract the audio track without transcoding.

• To convert FLV to MP3: audioextract video.flv
• To convert MP4 to M4A: audioextract video.mp4

Install:

sudo mv extractaudio.sh /usr/local/bin/extractaudio
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/extractaudio

See also:

• Wikipedia: Comparison of container formats
• Easy YouTube Video Downloader is a free addon for Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari that adds a nice download button to every YouTube page
• How to compile FFmpeg on MacOS X