Recommendations For Grabbing Audio Clips From Video

[kumquat]

Can anyone suggest an app that's specifically designed to quickly and simply grab audio clips from video flies? Something lightweight and where timeline trimming is the focus of the GUI? I don't want something designed to edit video with or play video with, but specifically to rip things out of, if such an app exists. Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thank you.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Can anyone suggest an app that's specifically designed to quickly and simply grab audio clips from video flies? Something lightweight and where timeline trimming is the focus of the GUI? I don't want something designed to edit video with or play video with, but specifically to rip things out of, if such an app exists. Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thank you.

Think this would be the best thing for you.

1) Download Audacity for Mac
2) Drag-and-drop your video into it
3) You've ripped the audio.

Audacity supports very basic DAW features like cropping, fading, looping, reversing, etc. I've just tested there with an AVI video & MP4. Works fine with both, so it stands to reason there shouldn't be much of an issue with other formats.

 

[kumquat]

Hi. The thing is I just want to grab tiny snatches of dialogue from feature length films. I do not at all need or want the entire audio track of a two hour movie. More like twenty seconds. So, what I'm wanting is something that will allow me to only grab the audio for these tiny bits of big files and allow me to fine tune the trim so I don't have to use an additional app afterward to do that. QuickTime's trim function just doesn't allow enough fine grained control over in/out frame markings. iMovie is too heavy and bloated. Audacity/Ocen/Garageband etc. require converting the entire file and then not having the video for reference to make the cuts. And all the apps I've found that are built to specifically rip audio from video only rip the entire thing, with no built in tools for specifying a trim whatsoever.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hi. The thing is I just want to grab tiny snatches of dialogue from feature length films. I do not at all need or want the entire audio track of a two hour movie. More like twenty seconds. So, what I'm wanting is something that will allow me to only grab the audio for these tiny bits of big files and allow me to fine tune the trim so I don't have to use an additional app afterward to do that. QuickTime's trim function just doesn't allow enough fine grained control over in/out frame markings. iMovie is too heavy and bloated. Audacity/Ocen/Garageband etc. require converting the entire file and then not having the video for reference to make the cuts. And all the apps I've found that are built to specifically rip audio from video only rip the entire thing, with no built in tools for specifying a trim whatsoever.

OK, in which case using Loopback or Soundflower would be the best thing for you.

It creates additional audio inputs/outputs. Set the input as Loopback/Soundflower in Audacity/other recording application & then set output in system preferences to Loopback/Soundflower.

 

[kumquat]

But those actually re-record the audio, right? As it plays? So you're losing fidelity by encoding already encoded sound, right? They don't just give you the option of marking in/out points to lift what already exists-?

 

[ColdCase]

So you want to see the video and audio at the same time and pull out a word or two. I don't think there is an app for that. There are plenty of apps that will record the audio, but you lose the video frame of reference. I use FCPX and share just the audio. There is also mixing studio equipment, of course, but you are trying to stay away from that.

There are some video conversion apps, like bigasoft's prores converter, that may provide enough fine grain control. Have you tried VLC? You may want to try all the free apps, most of them allow you to select a portion of the video. You may find one that works for you. I dunno if they split out only the audio for you.

 

[kohlson]

QuickTime's trim function just doesn't allow enough fine grained control over in/out frame markings.

Agreed. When I use QT to do this it's a 2-step process. First step is to get close (and with long clips close can mean within 30 seconds of either end), and the second step is to clip what I actually want.