Fastest audio extractor?

[bzl333]

Hi,
currently using Pazera Free Audio Extractor to grab the audio out of YouTube videos (typically 3GP but also MP4, etc) and only need like 32 kbps audio file out of it. Wondering if there is something faster because it seems to take quite a lot of time.

(i used to use TAudioConverter and that seemed to be pretty slow also iirc.)

[Userfriendly]

Well for getting Youtube audio specifically:
3D Youtube Downloader http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2634
Youtube-dl a command-line downloader http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

Front-end GUI for Youtube-dl both from the same creator of TAudioConverter. The youtube-dl binaries included with these are outdated but they can be updated within the programs help menu:
TVideoDownloader http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2640
Tencoder http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2314

All of them will let you download just the audio portion and let you specify the quality. Speed just depends on how fast your internet is and copy/paste/clicking/typing dexterity. No extracting necessary.

3D Youtube Downloader is probably the easiest for your needs. I can see it has an option to download just the 32 kbps audio file. While youtube-dl will require some reading to figure out which options let you do the same thing.

[bzl333]

thanks.

i use 3D YouTube downloader but for audio it will show say a 60 MB ogg file
so i click on it and then it winds up downloading like 330 MB of video file to get it .

i have limited bandwidth per month (60 GB) so i usually just grab the smallest file size
that has audio (144p or 240p 3GP file) and then extract the audio from that.
looking for something that does that quicker than Pazera if possible.

[webfork]

i use 3D YouTube downloader but for audio it will show say a 60 MB ogg file
so i click on it and then it winds up downloading like 330 MB of video file to get it

Are you using the advanced mode? I was able to download a 32 or 24kbps M4A file from some random video.

[Userfriendly]

In the tools menu of 3dyd there's a few modes you can choose from. Simple mode you can download just the audio file by clicking on the dropdown arrow next to download and choose audio > desired quality. You'll notice the file name will change to either .OGG or .M4A to indicate it will only download the audio file. Same thing in advanced mode, click on the dropdown menu go to 'Audio > check desired audio quality.

Make sure any video format is unchecked in Advanced mode. Video formats with a "VO" means its video only. If a "VO" format is currently selected and try choose an Audio only "AO" format, the program will try to download both and mux them together. So make sure a video format is unselected. The dropdown box will usually say "M4A 22050Hz Mono 32kbps". The smallest "AO" file will usually be "M4A 44100Hz Stereo 126kbps AO x.xx MB"


If you did it right then you'll only download the small audio file usually less than 10MB.

BTW, the 24/32kbps files are mono.

[Specular]

If 3D Youtube Downloader has a way of extracting just the lowest quality audio without downloading the video it I'd go with that. Although tbh it looks like a front-end for youtube-dl.

With youtube-dl you can grab just the audio stream without the need to download the video, however it's limited to the audio only streams and not the lowest quality streams found within some of the smaller resolution videos afaik. I don't think there's a way to download the audio stream of a muxed video independently of the video, but if 3D Youtube Downloader can do it that would be the better option.

Example using a re-dub of the Terminator Genysis trailer:

Code: Select all

youtube-dl --extract-audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe2Agl3bJAc

This will download the highest quality audio only stream at 256kbps, or 5.7MB for about 3 minutes.

[Userfriendly]

@specular
Yeah it can download only the audio from the video streams. I Just downloaded the nyan cat video 24kbps audio file and its only 2.12MB. While the lowest audio only file 126kbps one is 3.28MB

edit: scratch the first statement. Actually it downloads the 3GP file and extracts it automatically and I'm actually getting a 655KB audio file.

So you I guess 3D Youtube Downloader is just a front end for youtube-dl. It has FFMPEG files for muxing/demuxing too.

But 3dyd is only for youtube and vimeo. A better true front end for youtube-dl is probably TVideoDownloader because it supports a lot more sites.

[Specular]

@specular
Yeah it can download only the audio from the video streams. I Just downloaded the nyan cat video 24kbps audio file and its only 2.12MB. While the lowest audio only file 126kbps one is 3.28MB

It's likely just demuxing the audio stream from the downloaded video, which is simple to do.

Checking that Terminator trailer these are all the available formats from Youtube:



There's no way that I know of to download the audio stream from video+audio sources independently, so it's probably dumuxing the audio as the final step. Checking the bandwidth would show how much was actually downloaded, although 3GP files at that low resolution would be so tiny overall :p

Edit: saw your edit. Yeah, that is what's happening. youtube-dl + ffmpeg ftw

[Userfriendly]

Right on specular!

It's actually probably better to just download the 120kbps audio only file over the 32kbps 3gp one. File sizes are similar.

[bzl333]

i use 3D YouTube downloader but for audio it will show say a 60 MB ogg file
so i click on it and then it winds up downloading like 330 MB of video file to get it

Are you using the advanced mode? I was able to download a 32 or 24kbps M4A file from some random video.

yes, i was using advanced mode but i try not to use M4A files because seems they cause sporadic freezing of my mp3 player. also if im reading that program right its still downloading the video files and then extracting the m4a file from it. if there's an 86k audio only OGG file(typically the smallest audio-only file available), then its about the same size to download as the 3GP video file but then i can extract a 32k audio file that might take up only 1/3rd the space on my mp3 player.

[bzl333]

With youtube-dl you can grab just the audio stream without the need to download the video, however it's limited to the audio only streams and not the lowest quality streams found within some of the smaller resolution videos afaik. I don't think there's a way to download the audio stream of a muxed video independently of the video, but if 3D Youtube Downloader can do it that would be the better option.

i think this is true for 3d Youtube downloader also so must be the website's decision. only way to get the lower kbps audio stream is to download the complete 3GP video file.

edit: looks like 3DYD does the complete job from convert mode as it outputs a 32k mp3 file and it does appear to download the lowest resolution 3GP file available. i was worried that it would select some higher quality files because the impression i had was that it wasnt too concerned about bandwidth.

also thanks for UserFriendly's help.

[Userfriendly]

Do note that the convert mode is downloading the 3gp file which already has a lossy converted 32kbps M4A AAC audio and converting that to another lossy 32kbps MP3 format. That's massive audio quality degradation going from lossy to lossy on top of what youtube already has done converting from the original source. But I guess maybe if you're just using jank Apple ear buds then it wouldn't matter lol.

M4A AAC performance is an odd thing. Maybe try looking into custom firmware for your player. Such as Rockbox if it's supported.

[bzl333]

Do note that the convert mode is downloading the 3gp file which already has a lossy converted 32kbps M4A AAC audio and converting that to another lossy 32kbps MP3 format. That's massive audio quality degradation going from lossy to lossy on top of what youtube already has done converting from the original source. But I guess maybe if you're just using jank Apple ear buds then it wouldn't matter lol.

yeah, i hadn't thought about that. sound quality is pretty lousy but its just like spoken word medical or nutritional info. i have $20 ear buds with a kind of memory wire that fit over the ears. sound quality not too important to me but i like noise isolation and i also got tired of the wires fraying and having to be replaced. these work ok.

M4A AAC performance is an odd thing. Maybe try looking into custom firmware for your player. Such as Rockbox if it's supported.

yes, i have rockbox (very cool) on a $20 refurb Sansa Clip+ (i think or clip something or other). i thought it was cold temps that were causing some kind of short in the battery because if i placed it near my am radio i could hear some electric noise even tho it wouldn't power up(if i waited about 2 days the battery would be drained but my computer would finally recognize it and begin to recharge it but generic USB power source wouldnt recharge it). then i read on the amazon reviews that pushing on the power button for 20+ seconds and releasing and it will power on and sure enough. it does play m4a files usually without much problem but there will be glitches or errors later when im playing some other file(or when i turn it off it wont power-on later without the 20-second trick). also the problem might not be limited to m4a but those were the only non-mp3 files i had on it.

[Specular]

Realized how to change the audio quality extracted using youtube-dl. It uses the -f (video quality) option rather than the --audio-quality and --audio-format options.

So just for future reference to check the available quality settings of a video, using the previous video as an example:

Code: Select all

youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe2Agl3bJAc

Which will display a list like the screenshot above. The easiest way to select the quality is then to use the format codes (the left most column).

Code: Select all

youtube-dl -f 140 --extract-audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe2Agl3bJAc

The above line would download the '140' quality, which is the 128kbps audio only stream. Alternatively the 3GP video can be downloaded using -f 17 which will extract the audio as the final step, deleting the video stream (to keep the video stream the --keep-video option can be added to the command).