(Version 2.1.5 'Rincewind')

VLC is known as a media player but it can do so much more. One of the many things it can do is to convert files from one format to another, or as shown here, to extract audio from video as an MP3 file. Here's how...

This activates the Open Media window. Click Add and then navigate to the video file that you want to extract the audio from. The File Selection path will be displayed. Click Convert / Save

This activates the Convert window. Click Browse and then navigate to where you want to save the extracted audio. Name it and save it with a .mp3 file extension. The Destination file path will be displayed

This profile needs to be changed slightly. To the right of the 'Profile' drop down box, click on the spanner icon which will open the Profile edition window on the Encapsulation tab. Select RAW and then click the Audio codec tab

In the Codec drop down box select MPEG Audio. While here, you can also change the Bitrate. The default is 128 kb/s but you may want to increase this for better quality. Click Save. From now on the Audio - MP3 profile will remember these settings

After the above step you will be returned to the 'Convert' window where finally you can click Start to set things in motion. The time it takes to extract the audio varies depending on the file size, but if all goes well, a correctly encoded MP3 file will appear in the destination folder

This method can also be used to convert other audio formats such as WMA to MP3 by simply selecting an audio file instead of a video file