How To Remove the Audio Track from a Video

Posted by Robert Hayes on August 27, 2019

Smartphone owners take a lot of video every day. On YouTube alone, more than 300
hours of video are uploaded every minute, and that is literally a drop in the
bucket. People do everything from taking short videos of their kids or cats doing
something cute or terrible, to making full-fledged motion pictures with their
phones. The amount of video being taken grows enormously every year, and this trend
shows no signs of slowing down.

This creates a problem for people actually intending to do something with their
video, of course. Much of the time, the audio track that accompanies our recordings
is too loud, or captures sounds we don�t want to hear like swearing or other
interference. Other times, the sound being recorded is irrelevant to our intentions
for the video � we plan to replace it with a soundtrack such as music. In any
event, there are many times when we want to just remove the audio component
altogether.

Whether you are creating video for your own consumption or for posting online,
removing audio can be an important part of production. It can remove ambient noise,
remove loud or distracting sounds or pave the way for you to add a soundtrack to
your production. Either way, you first need to remove the original audio component
of the recording. In this article, I will show you how to strip out the audio
portion of your recordings.

REMOVE THE AUDIO TRACK FROM A VIDEO ON A COMPUTER

If you have your video file on a computer, then the easiest and most powerful way
of removing the audio track is to use the supremely useful VLC media player. VLC
has the capability to remove the audio track from a video on Windows PCs, Linux and
Mac. You can also use iMovie on macOS. I�ll show you how to use both. Both VLC and
iMovie are completely free to use.

USE VLC TO REMOVE THE AUDIO TRACK FROM A VIDEO

VLC is the king of media players because it plays almost any video file in any
format and has a range of powerful editing and manipulation tools for those who
want to dig a little deeper.

Open VLC and select Media from the menu.

Select Convert/Save and Add.
Add the media you want to remove audio from and select Convert from the small drop-
down menu at the bottom.
Select the spanner icon next to Profile in the next window.
Select the Audio codec tab and uncheck the box next to Audio in the window.
Hit Save.
Enter a destination for the file at the bottom of the Convert window.
Select Start to recode the media without audio.
Remember to name the file something different in Step 7 to create a copy of the
file and not overwrite the original. That way, if anything goes wrong or you want
to undo the changes, the original remains untouched. You can always delete the
original once you�re sure you no longer need it, if you like.

USE IMOVIE TO REMOVE THE AUDIO TRACK FROM A VIDEO

iMovie comes built into macOS and is pretty good for basic movie editing and
managing short videos for social media. It can remove audio from a video just like
VLC. If you would like to try iMovie, you can download it from here.

Launch iMovie and select Import Movie in the center.

Load your video, right-click it and Select Entire Clip.
Drag the video into the Timeline at the bottom of the screen to allow editing.
Right click on the Timeline and select Detach Audio. This splits the Timeline into
pure video and pure audio.
Select the audio track and hit Delete.
Select Export in the menu and save the video somewhere.
Save the media as a different file than the original to ensure you can undo or redo
any changes from the original. You can delete the original file after you�ve made
sure the new file is what you�re looking for.

USE ADOBE PREMIERE PRO TO REMOVE THE AUDIO TRACK FROM A VIDEO
If you happen to attend a college with a video lab, or you work at a place with
access to Adobe�s Creative Cloud suite of applications, you can use Adobe Premiere
Pro to quickly remove the audio files from any video. Make sure you have the video
stored on your computer, then open up Premiere and create a new project.

In the standard layout for Premiere, drag and drop your video into the library in
the lower-left corner of your display. Double-click this file to load it into your
preview monitor on the upper-left portion of the screen, then click and hold the
video icon below this. Drag and drop the video icon you�re holding into the
timeline, and have Premiere set the sequence settings based on your file. Your
video will now appear in the timeline with an audio file attached.

Now export your video from Premiere while making sure that your export is set to
match your sequence settings. The resulting video file is the original video you
imported into Premiere without audio attached, and it only takes about thirty
seconds to do.

REMOVE THE AUDIO TRACK FROM A VIDEO ON MOBILE

You might be working directly from your smartphone or tablet and don�t have a
chance to get back to a desktop PC, or you may not have access to a desktop.
Mobile-only solutions are less feature-laden, but if all you need to do is strip
out audio, then a single-purpose app can get the job done for you.

For Android, try Mute Video, Silent Video. It does exactly what it says on the
label � it takes a video shot on your phone and removes the audio track before
saving it. You can then use the video as you see fit.

For iOS, try Mute Video. It works in much the same way. It has a mini timeline
where you can edit your video and save while removing the audio track. It works
well and then enables you to save or download to another device should you wish to.

The only real downside of the smartphone-based apps is that they are significantly
slower than desktop software. Mobile CPUs aren�t really up to the challenge of
handling large video files quickly (other than to play them) and so it may take a
while. If speed counts, then a desktop solution is the way to go.

REMOVE THE AUDIO WITH A WEB-BASED TOOL

If you have a slow computer but a decent Internet connection, then using a web-
based tool to remove your audio track might be the way to go. There are many tools
available, but I have had success using Kapwing Mute Video. Kapwing has other free
video tools available online, but in this case the mute video tool does all we
need. It also gives you the ability to trim off material from the beginning and/or
end of the video, which might be a helpful extra tool. The resulting video doesn�t
have a watermark and the service is very fast.

Got any other suggestions for removing the audio track from a video? Tell us about
it below if you do!