Originally published at ffmpeg-micro.com You recorded a webinar, a YouTube video, or a product demo. Now you need the audio track as a standalone file. Maybe you're repurposing video content as podcast episodes. Maybe your app needs to strip audio from user uploads for transcription. FFmpeg handles this in a single command, but getting the codec and container options right takes some trial and error. How to Extract Audio from Video with FFmpeg The core command is simple. The -vn flag tells FFmpeg to drop the video stream, and you specify the output format through the file extension or codec flag. ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -c :a libmp3lame -b :a 192k output.mp3 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode This extracts the audio from input.mp4 , re-encodes it as MP3 at 192 kbps, and writes output.mp3 . The -c:a libmp3lame flag selects the LAME MP3 encoder, and -b:a 192k sets a bitrate that balances quality and file size.…