Remove the audio from a video

Two ways, and which to use

Mute in the Video Editor when you are editing anyway: trimming, adding music, cutting out a part. The clip's sound is left out of the export, and the MP4 carries a silent sound track.

Use Convert video files when you only want the sound gone, from one video or a hundred. In Converters choose Convert video, drop the videos, pick the format they already have (MP4 for MP4s), leave Quality on As it is, open More settings and switch off Keep the sound. The picture is copied exactly and the new file has no sound track at all. It runs about as fast as your disk can copy the file, and each result lands beside its original as “name (2).mp4”.

Silence only part of a video

To drop a swear word, a ringing phone or a stretch of traffic while keeping the rest of the sound:

• Split the clip with S at the first moment of the noise and again at its last. The arrow keys move one frame at a time for an exact cut.
• Click the piece in the middle and switch on Mute.
• To keep a little of the room instead of total silence, lower that piece's Volume to 10% or 20% rather than muting it.

The cuts do not show in the picture: the pieces play back to back exactly as before, and only the sound of the middle one changes. Muting a piece does not change its length, so the picture and any music on the lanes below stay in step. Each piece can still be trimmed or moved like any other clip.

Replace the sound instead

Muting is often the first half of a job: the old sound goes so that something better can go under the picture. The editor has two sound lanes below the clips:

• Music, for a song or a background track with its own volume and fades. Add music to a video has the details.
• Voice, for narration. Speak it into the Audio Editor's voice recorder, then bring in the WAV file it saves.

You can also keep the original sound faintly under the new one: set the clip's Volume to 20% or 30% instead of muting it. That keeps the sense of place, footsteps and a crowd, without fighting the narration. Drag either sound along its lane to line it up with the picture, and give music a short fade in so it does not start abruptly.

Keep the sound you removed

Removing the audio does not have to mean losing it. Before you strip it, save it as a file of its own with Take the sound out of a video: MP3, WAV, M4A or 12 more formats, from one video or a whole folder. That is the opposite job, the picture left out, and it is handy for a talk you also want as a podcast or an interview you want transcribed elsewhere.

One thing Octoolo cannot do is pull a voice apart from music recorded with it. Muting and the Volume slider act on a clip's whole sound. For a hiss or hum under a voice-over you recorded separately, the Clean up switches, Reduce background noise and Even out loudness, help a great deal. They appear when you click a sound on the Music or Voice lane, not a video clip.