How-To

How to Extract Audio from Video Files with Windows Movie Maker

By Brian Burgess

Last Updated on July 14, 2021

Windows Movie Maker lets you extract and save just the audio from a favorite video so you can listen to it on the go with your mobile device.

Sometimes you might have a concert video or a flick with a really great soundtrack, and all you want is the audio from it. On Windows, you can use the free utility, Movie Maker, to extract the audio and save it as an MP4/AAC file.

Update: The Windows Live Essentials suite of apps is no longer available or supported by Microsoft.

Getting Movie Maker (No Longer Supported)

If you don’t already have it, download and install Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. Both programs need to be installed together because they share several of the same features. The two are part of the Windows Live Essentials 2012 suite of free software utilities from Microsoft.

Open Movie Maker and click Add Video and Photos and browse to the location of the video file you want to get the audio from.

Once the video loads into Movie Maker (it can take several minutes for large files), click File > Save Movie and scroll all the way down, and click Audio Only.

Give your audio file a name, and it will save as MP4/AAC by default. But you can also save it as a WMA file, but MP4 is a more standard format that will play on most Android, iPhone, and other mobile devices.

You’ll see the progress while the conversion takes place. The amount of time will vary depending on the size and length of the video.

Success! When it’s finished, you have the option to play the music right away or open the folder location and move the file where you need it.

You can do this with several different video file types such as MOV, MV4, WMV, AVI, and MPG. There isn’t support for FLV files, which would be welcome, especially if you have many videos downloaded from YouTube in FLV format.