MP3 from Video
 

I'm taking an online electric guitar course. Most of the time the instructor makes his performances available in the form of downloadable mp3 files, but not always. In cases where the file is not available I have to use other methods to obtain a usable recording.

Currently I'm playing the performance thru a bluetooth speaker hooked to my computer and recording it with a Zoom H2 recorder. Then I transfer the files manually back to my computer for use. This works, but it's cumbersome, and the sound quality isn't great.

Is there an better way to get mp3s from computer video?

If it's a YouTube video (or on another major video platform), you can use 4K Video Downloader (free for limited use).

If it's something that 4K can't grab, and you have a DAW, you could try VB Audio VB-Cable. It's basically software that will let you rout your computer's audio output anywhere you want, like to a DAW. You set up VB-Cable to be your output device (instead of your speakers) and then set your DAW to use VB-Cable as its input, and you can then record the output of the video program into a track on your DAW.

Audacity's free and you can record and save the audio as mp3 from anything that plays on your computer.

OK, thanks. This gives me some ideas to pursue.

Interestingly, I tried recording in Reaper right from the WASAPI interface as per the video, and the quality was sub-par. I then tried it with Audacity, and it worked fine. Maybe there were some Reaper settings I needed to twiddle. In any case, thanks to Rudy for pointing out this little trick I was unaware of!

I had the same experience. I'm using an iMac, and my copy of Audacity didn't have any of the settings described in the video. I don't know why. So when I tried to record, all it was doing was recording thru the computer's built-in microphone what was coming out of the computer's built-in speakers. It wasn't a recipe for good audio, so the quality wasn't usable.

There’s a bit of free software called Shutter Encoder. It converts from just about anything to anything. I use it a lot when get files from clients in wrong formats. It will do what your want.

Because WASAPI stands for Windows Audio Session API; it's not available on a Mac. You might be able to use the VB-Cable software trick I mentioned above, as VB-Cable is available for macOS.

It it's a Zoom session the instructor should be able to enable recording for you.

Rogue Amoeba has offered Audio Hijack for Mac since the early 1990s - https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

Thanks. This looks very promising. I'm surprised that I've never heard of it before. I downloaded it, but when I tried to install it, I got the sense that it wanted to take over my computer, so I got a little nervous. I think I'll stick with my crude manual recording method for the time being. It's not great, but it works well enough for my purposes.