The cleanest option: keep the original track
Most videos already store their sound in a perfectly good audio format: AAC in MP4 and MOV files, Opus in WebM. ClipLime can lift that track out without decoding or compressing it again: AAC goes into an .m4a file, Opus into .ogg and MP3 stays .mp3.
This takes a moment even for long videos, and the result is bit for bit the sound that was in the video. Whenever the panel offers Original audio, no re-encode, it's the best-sounding choice.
Which format should you choose?
- MP3, plays on every device and app. 192 kbps is a sensible default; 320 kbps for music you want to keep.
- M4A (AAC), sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrate and is native to Apple devices.
- WAV, uncompressed, the easiest format for audio editors. Expect about 10 MB per minute of stereo sound.
- OGG (Opus), very small files that still sound clean, especially for speech. Some Apple apps won't open it.
- FLAC, lossless and roughly half the size of WAV. It appears when your browser has a FLAC encoder.
Bitrate in plain words
Bitrate is how much data each second of sound is allowed. More data keeps more detail and makes a bigger file. A converted file can't sound better than the track in the video, though, so choosing a bitrate well above the original (shown under Soundtrack in your file) only adds size.
Every conversion from one lossy format to another, such as AAC to MP3, discards a little detail. That's why copying the original track is preferable. WAV and FLAC don't lose anything further, but they can't bring back what the video's own compression removed.
What people use it for
- Turning a recorded interview or video call into a podcast episode.
- Keeping the music from your own performance or rehearsal videos.
- Getting a voice track ready for transcription, or generate subtitles straight from the video.
- Checking how loud a mix is with the loudness meter.
Once you have the file, the audio editor can trim it, remove pauses and even out the volume. Need the video without its sound? Mute the video, the picture stays untouched.