No GUIs, lightning fast, this is just one of those things that the command line does better.ToolRocket Video Converter is a desktop tool that can be downloaded for free. Now, I simply invoke rip_m4a_from_mp4 somevideofile.mp4 and I am left with an audio only version with the same filename, ending in m4a instead.

Since I always intend to rip aac audio data out of an mp4 container/video, I wrote a quick little script to do it. I can't believe something like this was so difficult and hidden for so long.

Coupled with disabling video via -vn leaves you with a lone audio track inside an mp4 container. ffmpeg will write the audio data out as various supported codecs, but specifying copy leads a bit-for-bit exact copy of the stream. acodec copy: Copy the audio source as-is, here's where all the magic is. vn: Do not record (do not consider) video data. So, after installing ffmpeg, and having the ffmpeg accessible at the command line, I ran a command like this: ffmpeg -i videofile.mp4 -vn -acodec copy audiotrack.m4a Between Rudix, Homebrew, MacPorts, and Fink (does anyone even use fink anymore?), third party software is a snap to install. I absolutely wanted an as-is version of the audio extracted from the video.įirst off, it's pretty easy to install things like ffmpeg, mplayer, things built off them, and similar open source packages nowadays.

I will expand on the question a bit and spell out the fact that I was already working with mp4 contained video/audio, so MP4 Video (.m4v) and AAC Audio (.m4a).

I finally found the exact combination I needed, and I found it in ffmpeg.

Handbrake convert mp4 to mp3