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DRAFT

Introduction

Wish you could convert audio from a video into an MP3 file you could play as a podcast? Sure, you could use Zamzar.com or some other converter that’s available, but sometimes, when you’re dealing with extremely large video files, use the free VLC Media Player to save the audio out from the video file. This short tutorial shows you how to save to MP3, but realize that you could just as easily save to the non-proprietary OGG sound format.

Note that I’ve successfully used this approach on videos in these video formats - FLV, AVI, MOV, MP4 and a few others. In this example, the original is a FLIP video camera AVI video file.

Steps to Save MP3 Audio

1) Open VLC and go to FILE: WIZARD

When the STREAMING/TRANSCODING WIZARD window pops up, choose Transcode/Save to File then click NEXT.

2) Find the video file you want to convert. If you were viewing/playing the video already, you can click on EXISTING PLAYLIST ITEM and select it from the list. Otherwise, browse/choose the file you want.

And then…

3) Choose Transcode Audio option and then pick your codec. Also be sure to select the bitrate…64K is very nice, but you could try lower to decrease file size…let’s try 32K.

4) Leave the Encapsulation Format as is. This next screen is entitled “ENCAPSULATION FORMAT”…your setting should be on RAW. Make no changes and click on NEXT.

5) On the next screen, ADDITIONAL TRANSCODE OPTIONS, just type in the directory path and filename you want (otherwise it will just go to wherever your documents are saved on your computer).

(of course, you folks who like MP3 might type “trainingwheels.mp3″ or something or other). It should look like this right before you click FINISH.

Here’s what the Transcoding Wizard looks like in action:

That’s all there is to it! Drop the resulting MP3 file created by the Transcoding Wizard into your MP3 player or VLC Media Player to listen to it.