Getting mp3's from any Youtube Video

I'm sure that many of you probably already know how to do this, but here are the ways I know to get the audio from any Youtube video and turn it into an mp3 (or any other format).

1. (not as good quality way)

Some audio editors like Audacity can record the sound that plays through your computers speakers. Just select "Stereo Mix" in the recording device section. If you are using a laptop try to have some external speakers plugged in because you will have to crank up you sound fairly loud to get good sized wavelengths. However, be careful as the song will clip(crackle and pop) if the volume is too loud. Then you can edit it if need be. After that (assuming Audacity already has the mp3 codecs) just export it to wherever you want it.

2 (Better quality)

Get a Youtube To Mp3 Converter (I use DVDVideoSoft's)
You can paste the url or in DvdVideosoft's case click the that is right below every Youtube video.

Once it has been converted I would recommend editing it in Audacity as before. That way you can remove the blank 5 seconds at the end of a song or in more extreme cases cut out talking in the middle or make the song longer by loop it a little.

hm...seems like the long way to do it

i wish youtube to MP3 still worked but i belive they got shut down becasue it was kinda illegal.

http://www.bestvideodownloader.com/

this used to be marked on alot of anti-virus's, but its not anymore, (i dont think it was ever an issue, just the anti's being picky) so i guess this is safe, i always use this, its quick, simple, and it works. iv never had any issues with it (except when the anti-viruses kept removing it)

I have a browser plugin that allows me to download the youtube video as either an flv or an mp4 file - I usually download the 720p or the 1080p version of the video as an mp4, then extract the 320kbps mp3 from that using Maniac Tools' free video converter. Kinda roundabout way of doing it, but at least I know I'm getting the best audio quality available.

I'm about to post another thread on downloading and playing online videos. At least the methods I use.


@DemonEyes
What I have here is the best way that I've found to get good quality songs (the songs in my spoiler should attest to that). What you posted is about the same thing as the DVDVideoSoft program. Using Audacity on the other hand is optional.

Jaysp656 wrote:@DemonEyes
What I have here is the best way that I've found to get good quality songs (the songs in my spoiler should attest to that). What you posted is about the same thing as the DVDVideoSoft program. Using Audacity on the other hand is optional.

but my program has broswer support, its as easy as pushing a button on your browser and it starts converting and download, no copy paste, nothing, just works in 1 step

i used to use realplayer to download videos trim them if they needed trimming (rarely) and then i would convert it to MP3, but i found the whole 1 click download much easier (again, in-broswer, right below the video)

It might be better. I prefer DVDVideoSoft though. You can also load up several in the queue before downloading.

Jaysp656 wrote:It might be better. I prefer DVDVideoSoft though. You can also load up several in the queue before downloading.

yea, you have to keep the youtube page open while it converts and then downloads otherwise you lose it, however, if a video/song in the chosen format has already been chosen before (or recently) by anyone, the download is instant and theres no conversion to be done. i assume there is a cache that is saved for some time so downloading a song of a video with 5 views, will have to convert, while a video with a couple million, probally already has been used by someone else recently meaning no conversion, just download, this also downloads videos in whatever qualitys are available from 240p to 1080p

All of you speak of quality, yet none of you know what these programs does. for shame.

The best method I find is www.file2hd.com or some other Youtube download service that DOES NOT convert the file, then open the file with mkvtoolnix and extract the Mp3 stream, simple, effective, speedy, easy and does NOT re-encode the MP3 at all

Of course, the stream is in an MKA container (Matroska Audio - still mp3 file) format but if you only want to listen on your computer this is no issue, if you want to transfer to your MP3 player, encode the audio using foobar, its a better option than those free downloaders.

Well, the quality of DVDVideoSoft's MP3 converter seems really close to Youtube video quality (even has a original quality option which may/may not be similar to what you mentioned). The quality I mentioned was the difference between recording the song in Audacity (through your speakers) and using a Downloader/Converter is fairly noticeable. Mainly a huge difference in how loud the song is.

I use the 'youtube downloader' found on cnet to convert the videos I dl. It can convert to mp4, mp3, etc.. Since it's free it does it one at a time though.

yea, the way I mentioned is manual, but very quick, the problem with transcoding MP3 is you are flattening the audio output because you have an already lossy file which is then converted to lossy once more (the process can never be reversed to lossless) and that means you literally throw out bits of the audio info in order to save space, thus, you are losing massive amounts of quality no matter what you use unless you mux the audio which is simply transferring the container and sibling content.

MP3 is a one time encode codec, its alright to use once on lossless sources because thats how it is designed, it throws out nything that doesn't fit within the human frequency hearing range, but it was never designed for use on lossy sources because during the transcode there is no 100% match on coding, as such loss of quality is inevitable. For proof, just listen to the following youtube video
first in 480p then in 240p, the difference should be super easy to hear.


Part2 for anyone wanting to actually watch this all.

You can download the video in the different quality settings, and DVDVideoSoft does have a setting for extracting original audio (AAC or MP3 or OGG) as well as converting to different formats like WMA, FLAC, ALAC, M4A, WAV, etc.