How to remove the audio from a video
Removing the sound from a video is the fastest edit there is, because it does not touch the picture at all. Here is how it works and when a different option is better.
Mute a video in three steps
- Open Remove audio from video and add your clip.
- Press Remove the audio.
- Download the muted video. It looks exactly like the original.
Why muting does not reduce quality
A video file is a container with separate tracks: a video track, an audio track, sometimes subtitles. Compression is applied to each track on its own. To mute a video you only need to write the video track into a new file and leave the audio track out. The video data is copied as it is, with no decoding and no re-encoding, so nothing about the picture can degrade and the job takes seconds even for a long clip.
That is different from converting a video, which does decode and re-encode the picture and therefore loses a little each time. If you need to mute and also resize or compress, do the muting step last or let the compressor remove the sound in the same pass (it has a Remove the sound option), so the picture is only re-encoded once.
Other things you may want instead
- Only quieter: use Change video volume to lower the level, normalize it, or add a fade. Useful when music is drowning out a voice.
- Keep the sound as a file: use Video to MP3. The video is dropped and you get the soundtrack as MP3, M4A or WAV.
- Replace the sound: mute the video first, then add your own track in a video editor. Starting from a silent picture avoids two audio tracks playing at once.
Checking the result
If you want to be sure no audio track is left, drop the file into the metadata viewer: the audio codec line will read “No audio track”. Some players still show a volume control on a silent video; that is normal.
Common reasons to mute a video
- A clip with copyrighted music that you do not have the right to publish.
- Background video for a website, where autoplay only works when the video is silent.
- A recording that caught a private conversation or an address read aloud.
- A screen recording where the microphone was left on.
Does muting make the file smaller?
A little, not much. Audio is usually 1–5% of a video file: an hour of 128 kbit/s audio is about 55 MB, while the same hour of 1080p video can be well over 1 GB. Removing the track saves that share and nothing more. If you need a substantially smaller file, the picture has to change too: lower the resolution or compress it. Muting first and compressing afterwards is still the right order, because it keeps the compressor from spending any bits on sound.
Muting several videos at once
The tool accepts a batch of files and returns them in a ZIP. That is handy when you are preparing several clips for a silent background loop, or when a folder of screen recordings all captured the microphone. Check the archive before deleting the originals: a file that was already silent comes back unchanged, which is easy to mistake for a failure.
When a player still shows a volume control
Some players display a volume slider for every video, silent or not, because the interface is generic. To confirm the track is really gone, look at the file rather than the player: the metadata viewer reports “No audio track” when there is none. A file with an empty audio track instead of no track is technically different, but behaves the same in practice.
Muting versus replacing the sound
If you plan to add music or a voice-over, mute first and add the new audio in an editor afterwards. Adding a track without removing the old one is the most common cause of two soundtracks playing at once, one of them faintly and out of sync. The exception is when you want the original sound as a quiet background under music: for that, use Change video volume to lower the level instead of removing it.
Does muting avoid a copyright claim?
Not on its own. Muting removes the track that a platform’s automatic system listens to, and in many cases that is enough to stop a music claim. But a claim can also come from the picture, and some rights holders recognise a clip by its video fingerprint. Muting does not make using someone else’s footage lawful either: the rights in the images are separate from the rights in the sound. Treat muting as a technical fix, not as a licence.