How do I convert an MP4 to an MP3?

Question

I have some songs which are in mp4 format and I want to convert them into mp3 format.

I am new to Ubuntu/Linux. So please explain the step by step process or give any software which can do the above job.

Solution 1

I would recommend Sound Converter. It is extremely simple to use for what you want. You can find it in the Software Center, or install it from the terminal:

sudo apt-get install soundconverter

Ubuntu Repo: soundconverter
Apt Link: Install soundconverter

All you need to do is open it up, change your preferences (Edit -> Preferences) then click the "Add File" or "Add Folder" buttons to add the music to be converted, and click Convert. It doesn't get much simpler.

Solution 2

If you mean export the audio from the video MP4 file then use ffmpeg, I do this all the time from FLV files. Firstly install ffmpeg:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-unstripped-52

The run:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -f mp3 -ab 192000 -vn music.mp3

It might say that your missing some codecs for MP4, in that case just run:

aptitude search codecname

And find it to install.

By the way, you can get more information about this by searching the web. Here are a few useful resources, found in this way:

• Converting mp4 to mp3
• How can I convert MP4 video to MP3 audio with ffmpeg?
• Converting mp4 to mp3 in Ubuntu

Solution 3

Here's how to extract the audio from an MP4 video losslessly (keeping the original sound intact without reducing quality)

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -acodec copy audio.m4a

Granted, this results in an M4A audio file not MP3. But most software and cell phones now can play M4A out of the box.

Solution 4

http://www.iasptk.com/ff-multi-converter-is-a-simple-graphical-application-which-enables-you-to-convert-audio-video-image-and-document-files-between-all-popular-formats

FF Multi Converter is a simple graphical application which enables you to convert audio, video, image and document files between all popular formats, using and combining other programs. It uses ffmpeg for audio/video files, unoconv for document files and PythonMagick library for image file conversions.

The goal of FF Multi Converter is to gather all multimedia types in one application and provide conversions for them easily through a user-friendly interface. Extra options will be gradually added.

The application is written in python and PyQt.

All code is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

FF Multi Converter is free software - software that respects your freedom.

Features

Conversions for several file formats.

Very easy to use interface.

Access to common conversion options.

Options for saving and naming files.

Recursive conversions.

Installing on Ubuntu and Debian

Stable release

To add the ppa to your system resources and install ffmulticonverter, open a terminal and enter:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ffmulticonverter/stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ffmulticonverter

Development release

Just change ppa name to ppa:ffmulticonverter/unstable and type the same commands as above.

View more solutions

Comments

[Wegko]

Wait, I meant Winff, a GUI frontend for ffmpeg.

[Michael Butler]

Does this re-encode the audio, thus reducing quality? Or is there a way to do this losslessly? Edit: Nevermind, found out how and posted an answer below.

[alexg]

Thanks, I tried transcoding some large .mp4 files from youtube into CBR MP3 files and I love how soundconverter utilized all four of my CPU cores out of the box.

[Jon Bentley]

On a relatively fresh install of Ubuntu 15.10, this crashes almost every time I hit the convert button. Shame, seemed like a good program otherwise.

[Andrzej Rehmann]

perfect for mp4->mp3 conversion

[wordsforthewise]

To enable conversion from mp4 to mp3 in ubuntu 16, I had to do sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

[mirabilos]

You can't stream those though (ssh server cat file.m4a | mplayer - errors out). I found out that you can stream them using the right container format, at no quality loss either: for x in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$x" -vn -sn -c:a copy ./"${x%.mp4}.wma"; done (see my comment above for why the ./). Do note that the original question did ask about conversion to MP3, which does include re-encoding and, thus, loss of quality.

[Nurlan]

ubuntu 17. no mp3 converter!

[tatojo]

There is SoundConverter for Ubuntu 18.04, nice!