MOV to MP3 Converter
Turn the MOV videos you filmed on an iPhone or Mac, such as lectures, talks, interviews and meetings, into small MP3 files with even volume that are easy to replay, share or transcribe.
Video to Audio
or drag MP4, MOV, MKV … files here ·
Up to 95 MB each· 20 files at once· Removed after 30 min
Your files are removed from our servers 30 minutes after processing.
Keep the source rate unless a device or app asks for one. 44.1 kHz is CD standard, 16 kHz is enough for speech recognition.
Mono halves the size of lossless files and is fine for speech.
16-bit is CD quality. Choose 24-bit only if you will edit or master the audio.
Videos with several languages or a commentary have more than one track. 1 is the main track.
Optional. Seconds (e.g. 75) or minutes:seconds (1:15). Leave empty to start at the beginning.
Optional. Same format as the start time. Leave empty to keep everything up to the end.
Files are deleted 30 minutes after processingPrivacy policy
128 kbps
The preset bitrate on this page, in mono, which keeps a spoken voice clear at about 1 MB per minute.
Normalize volume is on as well, so quiet speakers are easy to hear. Switch to 192 kbps stereo for music.
From iPhone video to something you can listen to
An iPhone records video as MOV, and many people use it as a voice recorder with a picture: filming a lecture from a seat in the hall, a talk at a conference, a family member telling a story, a meeting or an interview. Afterwards the picture is rarely needed, but the file is huge, because the camera saves high-resolution video for every second of sound.
Extracting the audio turns a multi-gigabyte recording into an MP3 of a few dozen megabytes. You can listen to it with the screen off, speed it up in a podcast app, send it to a classmate, or pass it to a transcription service that only accepts audio files.
The settings on this page are chosen for that kind of recording. Speech does not need stereo or a high bitrate, so the MP3 is small, and normalization lifts quiet recordings to a comfortable level.
QuickTime MOV and MP3 compared
MOV
MOV video
Apple's QuickTime movie container, first released in 1991. It can hold lossy footage such as iPhone recordings or high-quality ProRes masters, and some codecs inside it support transparency. Macs and editing software handle it well; some Windows players and websites accept MP4 more readily.
- Lossy or lossless
- Transparency
- Vendor format
MP3
MP3 audio
MPEG-1 Audio Layer III, developed largely at Fraunhofer IIS and standardized in 1993. Its lossy compression made digital music portable, and it remains the most widely supported audio format. Every phone, car stereo, browser and media player can play it.
- Lossy
- Open standard
Why convertYou leave the picture and Apple's video container behind and keep only the voice, in the audio format every device and app accepts. Convert this way when an iPhone recording is something to listen to, not to watch.
The audio in an iPhone MOV is AAC, usually in stereo. The converter decodes it and writes MP3, combining the two channels into one in mono mode. For a single speaker that loses nothing you would notice, and it halves the data needed at a given bitrate, which is why 128 kbps mono sounds cleaner than 128 kbps stereo.
MOV is Apple's QuickTime format, and MP3 is the ISO/IEC 11172-3 audio standard from 1993. The difference in reach is the point: an MP3 plays on Windows, Android, car stereos and old audio players that cannot open a MOV at all.
How to convert MOV to MP3
Add the MOV files
Drop the .mov videos on the box above, or press Choose Files and pick them from Photos or Files.
Keep the speech settings
MP3 at 128 kbps, Mono and Normalize volume are preset for spoken recordings. For music, choose 192 kbps and Stereo under Advanced settings.
Convert and listen
Press Convert and save the MP3 files to your phone, a cloud drive or a podcast app.
MOV to MP3 questions
Why are the settings on this page tuned for speech?
Most people who extract audio from an iPhone video want the voice: a class, a sermon, a meeting or an interview. Mono at 128 kbps keeps speech perfectly clear at a small size, and normalizing makes a distant speaker easier to hear.
Will mono make my recording sound worse?
Not for speech. An iPhone's microphones capture voices that sound the same in mono. For concerts or music, switch Channels back to Stereo to keep the sense of space.
What does Normalize volume do to my file?
It adjusts the overall loudness to a standard level, so a quiet lecture recorded from the back of a room plays at a comfortable volume. It does not remove background noise.
My iPhone video is bigger than 95 MB. What now?
Trim it on the iPhone first, or cut it into parts with the Trim Video tool. An hour of 4K video can be several gigabytes, while the MP3 of the same hour at 128 kbps is under 60 MB.
Do MOV files from screen recordings on a Mac work too?
Yes. Screen recordings made with the Mac's Screenshot app or QuickTime Player are MOV files and convert the same way, which is handy for recorded webinars.
Recordings that convert well
Lectures and classes
Replay a lesson at 1.5× speed before an exam, without the video taking up space.
Interviews and meetings
Keep the conversation as a small file for notes or a transcription service.
Talks and sermons
Share a talk with people who prefer listening, in a format every app plays.
Webinar screen recordings
Turn a recorded session on a Mac into audio you can follow on a walk.
Recordings with music, such as a school concert, need the other settings: choose 192 kbps or higher and Stereo so the instruments keep their place. Everything else on the page stays the same.
Making a voice recording easier to follow
Recordings made from a seat in a lecture hall share the same problems: the speaker is far away, the volume rises and falls, and coughs or chairs are louder than the voice. Normalizing evens out the overall level, which already makes a long recording far less tiring to listen to. It does not filter noise, so keep the phone as close to the speaker as you can when recording.
For transcription, trim the minutes before the talk starts and after it ends. Automatic transcription tools charge or limit by length, and silence or chatter at the edges only adds errors. Set Start at and End at while converting, and the MP3 contains just the part that matters.
If you plan to edit the audio, for example to remove a long question from the audience, convert to WAV first and export an MP3 after editing.
Getting long iPhone videos under the limit
Each file can be up to 95 MB, and iPhone videos grow quickly: a few minutes of 4K video can already pass that. Trim the video in the Photos app before uploading, or cut it into parts with Trim Video. Lowering the video resolution is pointless here, since only the sound is kept, but trimming the silent start and end helps.
You can add up to 20 files in one batch. Uploads are deleted after processing and the MP3 files 30 minutes later. For MP4 videos from other phones, MP4 to MP3 uses settings for music, and the Video to Audio page offers WAV, M4A and other outputs when an editor or app asks for them.
| Other ways to get MP3 | |
|---|---|
| Other ways to get WAV | |
| Other MP4 conversions | |
| Related conversions |
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