Free MP4 MP3 Converter for Windows

Free app to convert MP4 to MP3

Free MP4 MP3 Converter is a simple app that converts MP4 files (usually videos) to MP3 files (usually audio). This process is also known as ripping audio from video, but do make sure that these are the file formats you need before downloading. It’s a program that works well and quickly, but its limited supported file formats really make it a second-rate option.

You won’t have a single problem downloading and using Free MP4 MP3 Converter - it’s a breeze to get started. The download file is small (and therefore quick to download) and installing it just takes a few clicks - no funny business or sneaky installs.

Admittedly, Free MP4 MP3 Converter isn’t much of a looker - it has a very traditional Windows appearance that could easily be from 2005 and, although it offers several themes for you to choose from, none of them are very interesting.

The only purpose of Free MP4 MP3 Converter is to convert MP4 files (video) to MP3 format (audio only). It doesn’t do anything else and it doesn’t do the same operation in reverse - in other words, you won’t be able to convert from MP3 to MP4. To give you an example of how someone might use this program, imagine there’s dialog or music you want to listen to in a movie. Once you’ve ripped the audio, you’ll be able to listen to it on a standalone music player, like Winamp or iTunes.

Once you open the MP4 converter, you’ll see the main screen where you’ll add the files that need to be converted.

All the conversion options are at the bottom of the screen. It’s here that you’ll see that the conversion options are broken into 2 levels: advanced and standard. Before we go any further, bare in mind that although 'ripping audio' sounds like a complicated process, you as a user will have to do or understand very little - the makers of the app have done it all for you. Standard is the option that most users will go for. There are profiles that the manufacturers have already tweaked to offer you 5 presets where the quality/size options have been balanced with different focuses.

You’ll be offered:

The kilobits per second (kbps or bandwidth) range from 96 - 320. Alternatively, you can access the Advanced options, which will let you choose individual settings for things like codecs, aspect ratio, video size, and video quality. This is great if you know a little about audio customization, but is by no means necessary.

When you have a video file that you’d like to rip the audio from, you’ll add it to your queue by hitting the Add button. If you’re likely to have a continuous supply of such files, you can also add a stream. You’ll choose your conversion options and the location you’d like to save the file, and simply click Convert.

At this point, you can also choose to enable GPU hardware acceleration or tick the option to shut the program when it has finished converting. This is especially helpful when you’re converting a batch of videos. When the program has finished, it will alert you with a little beep.

In our tests, it converted well and quickly, but it was tricky to close (we didn’t select the shutdown option). In the end, we had to end the task via task manager but this was the only truly negative in what was otherwise a smooth process.

Free MP4 MP3 Converter does exactly what the name would lead you to believe. It worked well, was easy to use, and did exactly what we expected it to. Unfortunately, it’s a very limited program, because it literally only does this one job. When you look around to see if you have any other options to convert MP4 to MP3, you’ll soon see that both VLC and Windows Media Player to do the same job. Arguably, being much fuller-featured music and video apps, they’re probably a much better bet.

There are also some alternative apps that also convert MP4 to MP3. They’re generally pretty limited programs that are very similar to Free MP4 MP3 Converter, although some, like MP4 to MP3 Converter, actually convert to additional formats, like MOV, AVI, MPEG and WMV, which undoubtedly - for most users - makes it a better choice.